Recent Sermons

When I was young the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were weeks of waiting. Our family would haul out the Christmas decorations. We would put up our Christmas tree and hang all the ornaments on it. My mom would spread a bright red tablecloth over the dining room table and put a center piece on it with evergreen branches and pine cones and candles. We hung a wreath on the front door and then my mom might make some Christmas cookies.

When all the decorating was done, I thought there was still something missing. What do you think that might be? ... The Christmas tree was full of lights and ornaments, but I still thought it looked kind of empty. There were no presents under the tree. And so I would wait. And my brothers would wait. We would check every morning to see if there were any presents under the tree, but day after day we just had to wait. And we waited and waited, and then one day, maybe a week or so before Christmas, all of a sudden there would be presents under the tree.

Now during that time of waiting, it seemed like nothing was happening. Nothing changed. The tree looked the same every morning. There was a huge empty space underneath the tree every day. It didn’t seem like anything was happening. But as I got older, I realized that something was happening. I realized that on some nights my parents would go out to the stores. On the weekends they might make a trip to the mall. I realized that while I was waiting. My parents were planning. They were figuring out what to get each of us. They were shopping for our presents. After they bought them they would hide our presents so we couldn’t find them. One night after we went to bed, when they had bought all our presents, they would wrap them all up in bright wrapping paper and put them under the tree. So while my brothers and I waited and waited and it seemed like nothing was happening, my parents were very busy getting ready for our Christmas celebration.

This season before Christmas is called Advent. Do you know what Advent means? It means “coming.” It is the season in which we wait for the coming of Jesus. We wait to celebrate his first coming when he was born in Bethlehem. And we wait for the day when he will come again and make all things new and good. This morning we are celebrating Advent and Christmas with our special Lessons and Carols service. So we sing Christmas Carols, but we also read “Lessons.” The Lessons are bible stories that have to do with the birth of Jesus. Actually many of them tell of how God’s people waited and waited for the birth of Jesus. We will read of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, and also of John the Baptist. We will read of how God promised that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem and that he would bring peace to God’s people. We will read of Mary and Joseph, of the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men from the east.

All of these people were waiting in one way or another for Jesus. And sometimes they waited for years and years. The people of Israel waited hundreds and hundreds of years for God to send a savior. We will read of an old man named Simeon who waited for years and years in the temple for God to send Israel a savior. So sometimes during all this waiting, it seemed like not much was happening. God’s people probably wondered if God would ever do anything to save them. But they kept on waiting.

But even when we don’t see anything happening, God is often working quietly and slowly. During all these years that Israel waited, God’s people collected all the writings of the prophets and all the books about Abraham and Moses and the children of Israel, and they collected all Psalms that were written by David and others, and they put them all into one book which we call the Bible. At that time it was just what we call the Old Testament. During those years God was working in his people because as they worshipped him and as they read the stories of the Bible, they learned to put their hope in him. You see, as God’s people waited, God was working. He was preparing them for the coming of Jesus.

What is more, God was preparing the world for the coming of Jesus. During all those years and years the people of God waited, many of them moved out of Jerusalem to a number of cities throughout the Roman Empire. Some of them moved to Rome, in what is now Italy, some to Athens in Greece, and some to Ephesus, which is now in Turkey. And in those cities the Jewish people told other people about God and about the Bible and they taught them how to worship God. Those are the cities that years later the Apostle Paul traveled to. Now when Paul visited each of these cities, the first thing he would do would be to visit the local synagogue where the Jewish people worshipped God. He would talk with the Jewish people who were there, and he would talk to the people the Jews told about God, and he would tell them all about Jesus. And some of them came to believe in Jesus and that is how the church started to grow and grow. That is how new churches were started in cities all over the Roman Empire. So you see, while it didn’t look like anything was happening, while the people waited for God to save them, God was working, getting his people and the world ready to hear about Jesus.

So as we listen to the stories of God’s people and how they waited for God to send a savior, how they waited for Jesus, maybe you can think about how we are waiting for Jesus to come back. Sometimes we look around the world and it doesn’t look like much is happening. We might wonder where God is and what he is doing. But because we know that God was working back then even when people didn’t notice it, we can trust that God is working now. We can trust that God is working so more and more people now about Jesus. He is preparing the world for Jesus’ return.

And when we have to wait in our own lives, as we wait for Jesus to come back, we can wait with patience. Sometimes we might pray to God and sometimes it seems like God doesn’t answer right away. We have to wait and wait for God’s response. This season of Advent teaches us that as we wait, we can trust that God is working. And so we can wait with patience, with faith, and with hope.

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you left your heavenly throne to be born as a baby in Bethlehem, to bring your salvation to us and to the world. Give us faith that you are always working in this world so we may wait for your return with patience and hope. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] The other morning I woke up and there was some snow on the ground. What does it tell you when you see snow on the ground for the first time of the year? It tells you that winter is coming, doesn’t it? And when you see the leaves on the trees begin to change colors, what does that tell you? It tells you that fall is coming. So there are signs that we can see that fall and winter are coming. Is there a sign that spring is coming? When you see the trees beginning to bud, or maybe daffodils poking up out of the ground, then you know that spring is almost here.

Jesus lived in the land of Israel and they only have two seasons in Israel, summer and winter. And so Jesus once said, “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Jesus said that there are signs that we can see that tell us that his Kingdom is near. What signs do you think that might be? Maybe when we see people treating each other with kindness; that might be a sing of God’s kingdom. Maybe when we see people helping those who are sick, just like Jesus healed the sick; that might be a sign of the kingdom. Maybe when see people helping those who are poor; that might be a sing of the kingdom. Jesus says that one of the signs of the kingdom is that people will look to him. So when we see people looking to Jesus and putting their faith in him, that is a sign that Jesus’ kingdom is near. And when people put their faith in Jesus, you now what they do? The treat others with kindness. They take care of people who are sick. They help people who are poor. So when you see those things, you know that Jesus’ Kingdom is near. [End of Children’s Sermon]

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When people speak of the end times, they often bring up this passage and the images from this passage. Therefore we think the end times will be a time of chaos upon the earth. A time of wars and rumors of war. A time of great distress. A time of famines and earthquakes and pestilence. A time something like now. But, as I have noted before, Jesus says at the beginning of this sermon, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”

As we heard a couple of weeks ago, Jesus has just thrown the disciples for a loop. They made some comments about the temple and Jesus tells them that the temple will be destroyed. In their world that means the end of their world. Jesus goes on to predict that not just the Temple but all Jerusalem with it will be destroyed. The main topic of this passage is therefore not the end times, but the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. In this passage Jesus instructs his followers how they should conduct themselves when their world seems to be falling apart.

Rather than instructing his disciples to look forward in time to the end times, Jesus actually brings up images that will encourage the disciples to look back in time. In verse 27 he says, “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” This is a reference to Daniel 7, which we read two weeks ago. Daniel sees “one like a son of man” arriving with the clouds, but not to earth, but to the throne of God. In the vision God seats the Son of Man on his throne and grants him dominion over “all peoples, nations and men of every language.” The image is not of Jesus’ return to earth, but of his ascension to heaven which took place in AD 33. So Jesus is saying when the Romans destroy Jerusalem in AD 70, many will look up and see Jesus ascending to his throne in AD 33. How can that be?

Last week we saw how God is he who is and who was and who is to come. God exists outside of time. And so when Jesus ascends to the heavenly realms, he too enters that eternal space. His ascension happens outside of our time and can therefor break in to this time at any time. Or rather, the veil between heaven and earth can be pulled back at any time and we here on earth can see this heavenly event that happens outside of time.

In a similar way, then, this passage is about the end times. While the main drama Jesus talks about is the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, he alludes in several places to the end. He speaks of “that day,” which hints at “the Day of the Lord.” And there are times when the action seems to not just be in Jerusalem, but worldwide, and even cosmic. Jesus thus brings in images of the “end times.” He can do this because the Day of the Lord is also an event that is outside of our time and breaks into our time on occasion. It is analogous to God’s eternity who is and who was and who is to come. The Ascension and the Day of the Lord can be now, in the past, and in days to come.

So here is the scene. Jesus’ disciples are distraught at the thought of the destruction of the Temple. Jesus therefore tells them that there are going to be times ahead when the world will seem to be coming to an end. There will be chaos throughout the world and they, as his disciples, can’t expect to be exempt from the chaos. In fact, there will be times when Jesus’ followers will be persecuted. They will be arrested and hauled before governors and kings.

What then are Jesus followers to do? “Stand firm,” Jesus tells them. Stand up and lift up your heads.” “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life.” “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen.” In the midst of wars and rumors of wars, of pestilence and plaques, Jesus tells his disciples that it is their job to watch and pray. Wait, in other words, with attentiveness and hope. Watch for the signs of the Kingdom.

But what are the signs of the Kingdom? Are they not all the terrible things that are going to happen? Are they not the signs in “the sun, moon, and stars?” Are they not that “nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea?” See, the rising sea levels are a sign that the end is near? The forest fires in California, the wars in Yemen and Syria, are not these the signs?

Yes, and no. They are signs, but they are not the main sign. In verse 27 Jesus says, “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Jesus says “they” will see him being enthroned. “They” not “you.” The main sign of the kingdom is that when people in Jerusalem and then all over the world experience all these calamities, some of them will look and see Jesus. They will see him being given the throne to reign over the whole world. They will see him, that is, as Lord and King. This makes sense because another sign is that during these tumultuous times the disciples are going to be giving testimony about Jesus. The main sign of the coming Kingdom is people on earth claiming Jesus as King. When this happens Jesus’ ascension breaks in to our time. When this happens “the end” and the Kingdom break in to this world.

One of the traps we fall into as modern people is that we have come to accept progressivism as a reality. By progressivism I do not mean left-wing progressive American politics. I mean the modern idea that things in general -the world, politics, society, evolution - progress from lower states to higher states, from worse to better. We assume that the Kingdom of God follows the rules of progressivism and comes bit by bit into this world. But the Kingdom doesn’t come in progressively. Jesus says there are going to be wars and rumors of wars, persecutions and pestilence. Things are not necessarily going to get better. They may get better, but that may only last for a time. They may get worse, but that may only last for a time.

This passage, then, brings us a message of warning, but also a message of hope. First, the message of warning: when we fall into the trap of progressivism we get into all kinds of trouble. When we think the kingdom comes into the world step by step, bit by bit, we start to identify the Kingdom with particular political or social movements. For conservative Christians this meant that the election of Barak Obama was somehow a setback to the Kingdom of God. And many have now identified Trump’s administration with the advance of the Kingdom. As more and more conservative judges are appointed, and as the conservatives won the battle over the Supreme Court, the path of the Kingdom looks really good to them for years to come. For progressive Christians the opposite seems to be true. They decry Trump’s policies on the environment, immigration laws, international policies, well, on just about everything he has done or tried to do as a set back of the Kingdom of God. And they pray to God in despair.

This is a trap because then we start to believe that we as Christians must support this political party, or that social movement. We then start questioning the faith of other Christians who do not support our cause or our candidate. We can also be tempted to overlook the immoral tactics of our political party, or the lies our candidate tells, or the way our cause leads people to ignore other pressing problems in our world. At its worse, we begin to identify a particular nation with the cause of the Kingdom. To equate Trump’s “Make America Great” agenda with the Kingdom of God, for instance, borders on heresy. The Son of Man in Daniel is King over all the nations and he no longer works through any particular nation. Rather, it is the church, the global, international church who is given the mission to bear witness to Christ and his Kingdom.

And that brings us to my second point; this passage gives us direction for how we are to pursue God’s mission as the church. Our role in God’s mission when the world seems to be coming to an end is to wait patiently with expectation. As we said last week, the Kingdom of God is here in some ways but it is not fully here. But that does not mean we are on a progressive course in which we can see the slow but steady advancement of the kingdom. In fact, things may get a lot worse. It may appear at times that the Kingdom is regressing. But Jesus tells us “stand up and lift up your heads.” He encourages us to look to him and his past ascension, and to look to him and his coming Kingdom. He reigns. He is on the throne. Nothing that happens here and now can alter that. He has won the decisive battle over death and sin. Neither the gates of hell nor any political movement nor any terrorist organization will derail or set back or overcome the Kingdom nor will they ever fully overcome this world. God’s Kingdom is coming.

And so even when things appear to be at their worst, even when the world seems to be coming to an end, the Kingdom is not being set back. People can still look to Christ. We can still testify to the lordship of Christ and to his Kingdom. People will then look up and the veil between heaven and earth will be drawn back and they will see Christ on the throne and the Kingdom will break in upon us.

So instead of working frenetically as if God’s Kingdom depended on us, we can live in this world with calm assurance. We can live with trust and confidence that God’s Kingdom depends on God and not on us. That frees us to continue working for the Kingdom rather than trying to build the Kingdom. We work for the Kingdom by loving our neighbors as ourselves, seeking justice for the oppressed, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and welcoming the stranger. We work for the Kingdom by testifying that Jesus is Lord and living as if that were so. And when people begin to put their faith in Christ, when people act out of their faith in Christ and love justice and seek mercy, then we will see sprouts of the Kingdom breaking through the soil and buds of the Kingdom popping out of branches. Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. Amen.

Silence

Almighty God, in this Advent season as we anticipate the coming of your Son, our Lord and King, Jesus, keep our eyes ever upon him, seated on the throne so that we may wait with peace and confidence and joy and faithfulness and so that our very lives may be a budding sign of your coming Kingdom. We pray in the name of Jesus who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] Do you go to school? I wonder what you like about school. I like a lot of things about going to school. I liked walking into the building which I thought was pretty old. I liked thinking about how for many years other kids just like me had been coming to my school and learning the same things I was learning. I liked seeing all my friends every day. But what I really liked about school was that there was something new every day. There was always something new to learn, some new math problem to solve, some new story to read, or some new person from history to learn about. I guess you could say I liked the past, present and future of school. I liked how old the school was, I liked seeing my friends every day, and I liked how there was something new to learn the next day.

In the book of Revelation God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come.” Now Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega is the last so it is like saying, “I am the A and the Z.” God is the beginning and the end. All of time is in God - present, past and future, for he is the God is who is, who was, and who is to come. Because God has been in the past, we can trust that he will always be the same. We can always count on him. Because God is in the present, we can know that he is always with us, always watching over us, always carry for us. And because God is he who is to come, we can always look forward to the future. God will always be doing something new. He will always have something new for us to do. God is the A and the Z, the Alpha and the Omega, who is, who was, and who is to come. [End of Children’s Sermon].

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Evan, Elise and I like to make fun of Roxann once in a while because she always gets her sayings mixed up. Instead of saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Roxann will say “I want my cake and ice cream too.” “Why?” she asks, “would you have a cake and not eat it? It makes no sense. And who has birthday cake without ice cream?”

Now when you see Valencia’s cakes and cupcakes, I think “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” makes perfect sense. She is such an artist that you hate to cut into the cake and destroy her masterpiece. And so the saying rings true: you can’t have the cake, you can’t keep the cake in order to admire it, and eat it as well.

When it comes to this world and the world to come, we Christians are faced with a similar dilemma. We claim to believe in the coming Kingdom of God. We believe that one day all the world will recognize God as the Creator and Christ as King. We believe that one day heaven and earth will be joined together and God will make his dwelling with humanity once again. We believe that one day the dead will be raised and we and the whole world will be changed. We are waiting for the new heavens and the new earth. That is what we are waiting for.

The problem is that we tend to act as though there is a dichotomy between this world and the next. Some Christians place so much emphasis on their hopes in the next world, that they discount this one. What matters is saving souls to get people into the next. We have no hope of fixing this world’s problems, so we shouldn’t be wasting our time worrying about social injustice or climate change. Other Christians, however, seem to be rather embarrassed by the Christian doctrine of the end times. There is too much about these beliefs that is supernatural and fantastic. When Christians speak of resurrection, or heaven, or life everlasting, we sound so naïve. We sound as if we reject science and still live in the 15th century. Better to just focus on protesting the injustice in the world,, changing our criminal justice system, and protecting the environment. Basically many Christians are saying, “You can’t have heaven and earth too.”

Now I know that most of us here will say that we don’t fit into either of those categories. We know that we live in the “already, but not yet” of the Kingdom. We know that Jesus came to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. He testified to the initial presence of the Kingdom in this world through his preaching and in his ministry of healing. We believe that through his death and resurrection he won the decisive battle over the enemies of the Kingdom, sin and death. We all know that the Kingdom of God is in some sense here and now, for Jesus said to his disciples, “the Kingdom is among you” (Luke 17:21). But we also know that the Kingdom is not fully here. That is all too evident if you simply look around. We know that The Kingdom is here but not yet, and so we hope for the day when Christ returns to bring his Kingdom in its fullness.

But it is one thing to believe this, and another thing to live it out. It is so easy to become “practical atheists.” It is so easy to believe in one thing, to believe in the coming Kingdom of God, but then live our lives as everyone else around us does. There is a built in tension to the Christian life because we must live in this beautiful world that God created and loves, but yet we know how damaged and broken it is. We live in this world but we believe that this world is not the source or grounding for itself. There is something greater than this world, something transcendent, something beyond, Someone who is and who was and who is to come. And so we believe that this world is not ultimate, there is more yet to come. We live in this beautiful world, but we know it is passing away. At the heart of this tension is that it is so easy to point to this world, but difficult to point to that which is beyond and transcendent. We can only believe. We can’t offer proof of the truth we believe in, only testimony. This tension lies at the heart of our story this morning.

“What is truth?” With these words Pilate dismisses Jesus and turns down the path that eventually leads him to having Jesus crucified. The Jewish leaders have accused Jesus of a crime, but Pilate can’t figure out how to find their accusations credible. They have accused him of treason, of claiming to be a king. But Pilate looks at Jesus and asks incredulously, “Are you the King of the Jews?” What a joke, he must be thinking.

Of course, Jesus doesn’t help to clear things up. “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king, then!” Pilate replies, but under his breath he mutters, “King of another place!? You can be king of Never-Never land for all I care.” Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” It is a rather pertinent question for today. With both sides of the political spectrum claiming “Fake news!” we may be tempted to throw our hands up in the air like Pilate and ask, “What is truth?” But in the absence of an answer, when we can’t determine what is “truth,” when “truth” seems relative or debatable, then we tend toward violence. “I find no basis for a charge against him,” Pilate tells the religious leaders, but at their insistence he releases a true revolutionary named Barabbas and has Jesus beaten and crucified.

The rub of it all for us is that the truth to which Jesus has come to testify, just like the kingdom over which he reigns, is not of this world. Jesus comes to bear witness to the fact that this reality, this world in which we live is not the arbiter of Truth. The foundation of what is True, the foundation of what is real, lies outside this world. Jesus’ Kingdom is what is most fundamentally real and true. In our passage from Revelation, God says “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come” (1:8). The basis of reality lies in God who is the beginning and the end, who exists outside of time and so exists outside the reality in which we live.

To say that truth lies outside this world means to recognize that this world is transitory. It is passing away. It is not ultimate. Seeing this we can accept that this world is a fallen world. We therefore don’t have to accept this world on its terms. Jesus said if he was from this world his followers would become an army. Many in this world would have us believe that violence lies at the root of this world, that force is the only way to get things done. But we know that this is a fallen world. Violence and hatred are not inherent to the world; they are intruders. We therefore don’t have to play by the rules of this fallen world. Rather, we believe that God, who is love, created this world and founded it on love and grace. The hope we have for the kingdom is that love and grace will finally overcome violence and hatred, fear and anger. It is this faith that enables Jesus to allow the world to convict him to death through a sham trial, beat him and mock him, and, finally, to nail him to a cross until he dies. He endures the cross because he knows that violence, fear and hatred will not have the last word. He knows that there is a more fundamental grounding of this world that will be fully present in the next. He knows what is most deeply true and so he can die to that which is not True.

Last week I quoted Simone Weil who said, ““Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”[1] The word we normally use to mean “waiting patiently in expectation” is hope. But hope has been stripped of its deep meaning. For most people to hope is simply to wish for something. Once again Henri Nouwen is helpful as he draws a distinction between wishing and true waiting.

Wishing is specific. We wish for certain things. We wish for a new bike for our birthday. We wish for a promotion. Wishing therefore leads to impatience and a demand to control the outcome. When we don’t get what we want we get anxious and annoyed. Wishing is derived out of a sense of lack and is often driven by selfish desire, or fear, or anger. And since it is focused on something specific and a demand for control, it locks us into a certain path which usually leads to violence if our wish is not fulfilled. You can see this in how Pilate traps himself into a course of action by his own wish.

Pilate wishes for a calm and peaceful Passover week. Tensions are high as the Jews celebrate their liberation from Egypt. He has already arrested one rebel named Barabbas and now the Jewish leaders are turning in one of their own and saying he is claiming to be King. The path before Pilate, the path to demonstrate that Rome’s grip over Judah remains strong and firm, yet not unreasonable, demands a delicate balancing act. Through this whole process Pilate has demonstrated his willingness to negotiate, at least a little. He finds his way ahead by acceding to the request of the Jewish leaders, having this Jesus crucified, and releasing Barabbas. He thus shows that he can be merciful, but more importantly, he has gained what he wants.- through this whole process the Jews have conceded Rome’s rightful rule over them. They have admitted that it is his place to condemn someone to death, and, his greatest victory of the day, the Jews are out in the courtyard yelling, “We have no King but Caesar.” The truth of Jesus’ innocence is a small price to pay for all of that.

In contrast to Pilate, Jesus waits. He does not wish for God to send a band of angels to save him. He does not wish for his disciples to raise up an army to storm the palace. He hopes and waits for what is more true than violence. He hopes and waits for resurrection.

In contrast to wishing, which is specific, Nouwen says that true waiting, hope, is open ended. Jesus has faith in the promises of God that he will be raised from the dead and that this act of dying on the cross and rising will bring in a new age. To wait open-endedly, according to Nouwen, is to “[give up] control over our future and [to let] God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God’s love and not according to fear.”[2] To wait with open-ended hope, to wait in expectation, is to refuse to demand that our future turn out a certain way, but to trust that our future is in the hands of God. And thus, instead of being locked into a path that leads to anger and violence, our future opens us up to love, gentleness, kindness, and patience.

And that leads us to a second difference between wishing and waiting. Since wishing is specific, it leads to an end. But since waiting and hope are open ended, they lead to ever new beginnings. Jesus trusts in God, the God, according to the book of Revelation, “who is, and who was, and who is to come.” Jesus trusts in the God who is eternal, who has no beginning and so has no end. God’s actions are therefore ever becoming. Charles Matthews, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, argues that “the fundamental ontology [or the fundamental reality] of the world is describable as “being born again” – a form of existence oriented toward ever deeper beginning. We are saved from something, but what we are saved from is fundamentally a bad version of ourselves, our solitude, our isolation. And what we are given is life abundant – life that has properly, at last, begun.”

Friday afternoon I sat on our family room floor with several strands of Christmas lights strewn around me. As my parents looked on I began the tedious job of trying to figure out which bulb in a strand of 400 lights was causing half of them to fail. After several minutes of this my parents and I decided that the problem was not due to any single bulb, but due to a fault in the wires. It would be impossible to find and fix the problem. There was nothing to do but throw them away and buy three new strands of lights to hang on our front porch. But I know that in 3 or 4 years, I am going to be sitting on the family room floor with several stands of lights strewn around me trying to figure out why half of the lights on each strand don’t work.

We idolize newness and novelty in our culture. We love getting new clothes, a new car, a new computer, a new phone. But so much of the new stuff we buy is built to fail. Computers and phones are designed to become obsolete in 4 or 5 years. Companies make it more expensive to repair your dishwasher than to replace the whole thing. Newness is an idol because while we value what is new, we discard all that is old. And the new then quickly becomes old.

The newness we hope for in the Kingdom of God, however, is not such a false newness. It is a newness based on Truth, for what is new, what is becoming does not discard the old. Rather what is new comes out of the old and fulfills the old. The dichotomy be heaven and earth, between this age and the age to come is thereby erased. What we hope for is resurrection in which our old, dead bodies will be raised to new life. What we hope for, what we wait expectantly for is the new heavens and the new earth that will be made from out of the present heavens and the present earth and will fulfill what this world was and is supposed to become. Let us therefore be on the side of Truth. Let us listen to Jesus. Let us wait in hope-filled, patient expectation for his Kingdom. And in this way let us testify to the Truth. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] Quoted in Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God’s Presence in Our Lives,” in The Weavings Reader: Living with God in the World (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1993), 70.

[Children’s sermon] What do you like about the building here at Hessel Park Church? … Is there anything special about Hessel Park Church? Our church is a bit different than other churches. There are no pews. It is all white. We have our potluck lunches right where we worship. I like it when we have our snacks outside after the worship service. There are quite a few special things about Hessel Park Church.

Well I don’t know if you know this, but the temple in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day was one of the most beautiful and amazing buildings in all the world at that time. It was made of all white marble, so it really shone like a light on a hill. King Herod actually made the hill on which the temple was built twice as big by building huge walls of giants stones and then filling it all in.

But you know what was most special about the temple? The temple symbolized that God was present with his people. Inside the temple there was a holy place and in side that was a place called the Holy of Holy’s. And way back when King Solomon built the first temple, God’s glory came down and filled the Holy of Holies.

Now we believe that God is everywhere. But when we come to church we believe that God meets us here. When we worship God, we worship in his presence. That is the most special thing about Hessel Park Church, and about any church. But there is one more thing I think is pretty special about Hessel Park Church, and it is this big, huge window behind you. When God meets us here as we worship, anyone can look in and see us. This window reminds us that when we meet God here, he is not just for us, God is here for everyone in the world. [End of Children’s Sermon]

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Some friends and I were talking about all the construction happening on campus lately. It seems every time you pass by a place in campus town that you haven’t been to in a while, there is a new high rise of student apartments. One of my friends commented on how disorienting it is just to walk around campus town. Old restaurants and shops are gone. Familiar views have disappeared. You look up from walking and you have to take a minute to recognize where you are. The number and size of the new high rises in Champaign-Urbana over the past 7 years is rather stunning.

The disciples look up at the temple and they are amazed. Many of them are fishermen used to seeing the flat surface of the Sea of Galilee backed by the surrounding hills. Nowhere else have they seen such magnificent architecture. Nowhere else have they beheld such a massive structure. “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

Of course the awe in the voice of the disciples is not just due to the truly incredible sight of temple. Their awe of the size and magnificence of the temple was matched by their beliefs about the temple. The temple represented God’s presence with his people. But this temple had been built by Herod the Great, and many Jewish people had ambivalent feelings about the priests who ran the temple. While Herod claimed to be a Jew, he was a puppet of the Roman Empire. Most people saw through his false piety and the false piety of his sons who reined in Jesus’ day. Likewise, the people knew that the High Priests were in the pocket of Herod and of Rome. Ironically, the main symbol of Jewish nationalism was also a symbol of Israel's subservience to Rome.

But because the temple represented God’s presence with his people, it also became a symbol of hope. The people longed for a Messiah not only to come and defeat their enemies, the Romans, but also to cleanse and purify the temple. They longed to worship God in freedom once again. The temple would then be not just a symbol of God’s presence, but the assurance of God’s actual presence with them,

Our buildings often embody our hopes as well. So what are you waiting for? The high rise apartments going up on campus embody the hopes of many student to live a life of urban success. Many Americans, and many of us, live in single family homes that are rather large when compared to homes in the rest of the world. We literally build the American dream and then live in it. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 targeted buildings that symbolize what Americans put their trust and hope in – the economy, the government, and the military.

When Jesus responds to the disciples he basically drives a battering ram through their hopes and dreams. “Do you see all these great buildings?” he says in verse 2, “Not one stone here will be left on another, every one will be thrown down.” “Tell us,” the disciples ask desperately, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to be fulfilled?” At this point the hopeful waiting of the disciples has been turned into a fear of God’s judgment. They recognize a prophetic pronouncement of judgement when they hear it, and the prediction that the temple will be destroyed is definitely a prophetic pronouncement of judgment.

So what are we waiting for? Over the next few weeks through the season of Advent, we are going to be looking at the spirituality of waiting. Simone Weil, a French philosopher and mystic said, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”[1] But what are we waiting for? Many in Jesus’ day put their hopes in a coming judgment of the Romans and of the religious leaders who had been coopted by them. Others went along with the Romans and those same religious leaders. Today we might put our hopes in our political institutions. Despite our dissatisfaction with those in Washington, I think we also put a lot of our hope in politicians as well. Some put their hopes in the economy. Others just hope for a job and career that pays them well enough that they don’t have to worry about politics or the economy. Still others put their hopes in social and grass roots political movements.

Those of us who believe in God are supposed to put our hopes in him, but what does that look like? Are we hoping for God to come and pass judgment on our political and economic systems? On our enemies? Are we even aware that he may just come and pass judgment on our “temple” on our religious systems: our theological formulations, our lists of do’s and don’ts, and the prejudices they produce? Are we hoping that he will just bless our political or social endeavors as we pray in our prayer of confession? What do we hope for? What are we waiting for?

For us as Christians to “wait patiently in expectation” is not an easy task. After predicting that the temple will be destroyed, Jesus paints a frightful picture. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes. Although Jesus is speaking specifically about the Roman invasion of Israel when they destroyed the temple in AD 60, I think these words can still speak to us today. The worldwide situation, we might say, may become filled with chaos. Tensions between Iran and the US and China and North and South Korea may grow. There may be fires in California and hurricanes in North Carolina, but Jesus says in verse 7, “the end is still to come.”

The chaos in the world, however, is just the backdrop for an equally frightful yet more intimate picture. Jesus tells the disciples that they will be persecuted by the religious leaders. They will be arrested and put on trial before governors and kings. They may even come to the same fate as he does, and many of them did. While we hope in God, that does not mean that we as Christians are exempt from suffering. Rather, we may suffer even more than others because we follow Jesus.

A few weeks ago we talked about how we live in a culture of fear. Our fears are heightened by mass shootings, contested election results, trade wars and rumors of war. Henri Nouwen once said, “Fearful people have a hard time waiting, because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. But if we cannot flee, we may fight instead.”[2] He goes on to say how fear and anger are the enemies of true Christian spirituality, which is a spirituality of waiting. But if there are two things that characterize the emotional state of this nation, they are fear and anger. So how do we wait patiently in expectation in the midst of a culture of fear and anger? By flight or fight?

That brings us back to our main question. We can only wait patiently in expectation if we know what we are waiting for. Jesus says that all these fearful things that will take place do not necessarily signal the end, “The end is still to come,” he says. Rather, he says, they signal a new beginning. “These are the beginning of birth pains.”

Jesus has been preaching all through the gospel of Mark the good news of the coming Kingdom of God. We are waiting for the Kingdom. We are waiting for the joining together of heaven and earth. We are waiting for the time when all humanity will recognize God as their creator and Jesus as their King. We are waiting for a time when God will come to dwell once again within the creation. Jesus, the word of God made flesh, Immanuel, God with us, was a foretaste of our hope that God would one day fully and openly dwell with humanity once again as God walked with Adam and Eve. That is what we are waiting for.

But that begs another question, if we are waiting for the Kingdom, how does the Kingdom come? I believe this is one of the most important questions we as Christians need to answer today, because I believe many Christians are answering it in the wrong way. Many Christians like to focus on the truth that Jesus has been victorious. As it says in our reading from Hebrews, he has offered himself as the sacrifice to take away the sins of the world and he has sat down at the right hand of God. Jesus now reigns.

Many Christians, however, assume that since Jesus is on the throne that God has now changed tactics. Now that Jesus is on the throne the kingdom is going to come by Christians exerting their power in the world. Faced now with opposition, faced now with waning influence in a secular world, many Christians believe it is time to fight. They believe that Christians should seek to gain political power. They should seek influence in the media and in the corporate world. They should focus on and try to win the “culture wars.” Many behave as though the coming of the Kingdom is about extending Christian influence in the world and forcing others to conform to Christian ethics and beliefs.

But what does our text say? Our text says that the disciples will not become governors or CEO’s, but that they will be arrested and put on trial before governors and kings. But it says more than that if we look at the context. We have noted over the past weeks how this sermon in chapter 13 follows five stories that center around the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. In Mark chapter 2 there is also a series of five stories in which Jesus gets into arguments with the religious authorities. Mark concludes those stories saying, “Then the Pharisees [that is, some of the religious authorities] began to plot with the Herodians [that is, some Jews who supported the political authorities] how they might kill Jesus.” In our text this second set of conflict stories ends with Jesus telling his disciples that they will be “flogged in the synagogues” and that they will “stand [on trial] before governors and kings.” They, like Jesus, will not assume religious or political power, but they will be persecuted by the religious and political powers.

Jesus brought in the Kingdom by proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, by welcoming the outcasts and the sinners into his company, and by curing the sick and casting out demons. Ultimately, however, he brought in the kingdom by dying on a cross and rising from the dead. But after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, God’s game plan does not change, only the players. Jesus tells the disciples that they will be persecuted, but the end is not yet because “the gospel must first be preached to all the nations” and that they will stand before governors and king as witnesses. The kingdom comes by the Disciples of Christ, by you and me, following in the actual footsteps of Jesus. Christians are called to influence the world in politics, economics and the social realm. But not by flight or by fight, but by bearing witness.

We hope in the Kingdom and we wait patiently in expectation by taking up our cross and following Jesus. We are able to do this because we are not the only ones waiting. In our epistle reading it says, “But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool” (10:12-13).

It is tempting to take this language as language that validates the Christian pursuit of power over our enemies. Jesus is waiting until his enemies have been made his footstool, put down under his feet. But is that what this means? Several times throughout scripture it says that heaven is God’s throne and earth is God’s footstool. Sometimes the image is that the temple in Jerusalem is God’s footstool. Numerous times the people of God are called to come before God and worship at his footstool. This is not an image of military victory over one’s enemies; it is an image of rebellious children of God being forgiven and worshipping their savior. Listen to what follows, “This is the covenant I will make with them … I will put my law in their hearts and I will write them on their minds” and “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” In Jeremiah these words were spoken about the nation of Israel. Here the author applies them to Jesus’ enemies, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Jesus is waiting for his enemies to be made holy.

So what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the Kingdom of God? Are you waiting for the time when heaven and earth will be joined and God will make his dwelling with humanity once again? Are you waiting for Jesus to forgive the sins of those who continue to rebel against God? Are you waiting for Jesus to give them new hearts so that they may know and follow God’s laws? Are you waiting for Jesus to make them Holy? Are you waiting for that day when they join with us in worship? Are you waiting for what Jesus is waiting for? Then let us follow the words of Hebrews and “draw near to God with a sincere heart and with full assurance of faith” and “let us spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Let us wait with patient expectation by bearing witness to the love and mercy of God by worshipping him and through our deeds of loving kindness. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Completing and perfecting god, in your Son’s cross you took on the grief and failure of the world, and in his resurrection you dismantled the power of sin and death. Look with mercy on all your people whose longings are unmet. When your children plead for the chance to be creative, productive, or nurturing, give them gentleness, fulfillment and purpose. When your people yearn to bring joy to the life of others, comfort to the afflicted, or trust to the wounded, give them courage, wisdom, and patience. When your kingdom seems far off, strengthen you church to wait with faith and hope and love, until the day when you are all in all, on God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen[3]

[1] Quoted in Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God’s Presence in Our Lives,” in The Weavings Reader: Living with God in the World (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1993), 70.

[Children’s sermon] A couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about Halloween and how sometimes people do scary things on Halloween. But people also just do fun stuff on Halloween. When I was little I often picked costumes for Halloween that weren’t scary but just fun. One year I was a football player and another year I was a cowboy. On Halloween people dress up as someone else just for fun. But sometimes we pretend to be someone we are not. Sometimes we might pretend to be smarter than we are so someone will like us. Or we might pretend that we like a certain movie because someone else likes that movie.

Jesus once told his disciples about some people who pretended to be something they were not. He warned the disciples about the teachers of the Law who liked to dress in long robes and then go to the temple so everyone would see them at the temple. They liked to sit in the best places at church so everyone would see them at church. And when it was their turn to pray, they prayed really long prayers so everyone would think that they loved God and obeyed him perfectly. But they did all this as if they were wearing a costume. It was all pretend because if there was a person who was in need, they wouldn’t help them. And even worse, they would steal from people who had less than them.

Well when you dress up for Halloween, I bet that no matter what costume you wear, your parents know who you are. You might be able to go around your neighborhood and your neighbors won’t know you, but your parents always know who you are. It is like that with God. We might pretend to be something we are not, but God always knows who we really are. When I was young and dressed up for Halloween, I was always glad my parents knew who I was. And when there were those times I pretended to be something I wasn’t so someone at school might like me, I was always glad I never had to pretend with my parents. In the same way I am glad that we never have to pretend with God. He always knows who we are. God knows we are not perfect who we don’t have to pretend with God. He knows who we are and we can know that we are his. [End of Children’s Sermon]

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Today is Veteran’s day, a day when we remember and recognize those who have served their country in the various branches of the military. To serve in the military is to offer your life for the good of the country. It is an honorable and selfless thing to do. It is a sacrifice some make on behalf of the many.

On some special days last week’s World Hunger Sunday, I have to watch myself that I say that we are recognizing, or remembering such and such a day instead of celebrating such and such a day. We remember and recognize the tragedy of 9/11 each year on its anniversary, but we don’t celebrate it. We remember and recognize those soldiers who gave their lives in service to their country on Memorial Day, but we don’t celebrate that they died. We recognize World Hunger Sunday, but we don’t celebrate the fact that 462 million adults around the world are underweight and that 155 million children under the age of 5 suffer from stunted growth.

For some of the same reasons I hesitate a bit to say that we celebrate Veterans Day. There are things we can celebrate on Veterans Day. We can celebrate the end of past wars. We can celebrate that many veterans returned home. But while I honor and deeply appreciate the service and the sacrifice our veterans have made, I find it hard to celebrate their service because I cannot celebrate the cause of their service. The only reason that people serve in any military anywhere is because nations go to war against one another. The only reason we have veterans is that we live in a world in which we sometimes find it necessary to authorize some men and some women to kill others. I find that hard to celebrate. While it is good and right to honor veterans for their sacrifice, their bravery, and their service, I never want to glorify war.

Likewise, we should be cautious about how we consider the widow in our Gospel lesson this morning. It would be easy to hold the widow up as a hero of faith. It would be easy to say that we should all emulate her. When we pass around the offering plate later in the service will you be giving “large amounts” out of your wealth? Or will you be putting in everything – all you have to live on? She gave much out of her poverty, but what is wealth? Can your wealth compare to the love of God? Can your wealth compare to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross? In the face of Christ is not our wealth utter poverty? Shouldn’t we all, wealthy or poor, follow the example of the widow and give all that we have?

Jesus, however, does not simply hold up the widow as an example of righteous behavior that we ought to emulate. And Mark places deliberately this story in his narrative in such a way to make it more than just an illustration of self-sacrifice. As we saw last week, this story takes place within a larger section that begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowds proclaim that he is the Son of David. It is the story of the return of the Messiah to Jerusalem. The section ends with his sermon in chapter 13 which has much to do with his “return” at the end of the age. The main theme of the section is the nature of his authority as the Messiah which is played out through a series of controversies between Jesus and the religious authorities in the center of the section. All the action takes place in the temple and Jesus’ critique centers the temple system. The two short stories we read this morning are structurally mirrored by two stories at the beginning of the section in which Jesus critiques the temple system – he curses the fig tree that has failed to produce fruit and he cleanses the temple of the money changers and those selling sacrificial animals. Last week I argued that those stories had to do with injustice. Thus the stories today also has to do with injustice.

This is obvious in the first story. Jesus criticizes the religious leaders for their hypocrisy. As religious leaders they are supposed to set an example of righteousness. The people should be able to look to them to see how one ought to live one’s life in the presence of God. The religious leaders, love to be looked to. “They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect,” Jesus says. They desire “the most important seats in the synagogue and the places of honor at banquets.” They carry on as though they should be looked at and imitated. But, says Jesus, “They devour widow’s houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.” They are not concerned with matters of justice or mercy, and their religious behavior is only for show.

Now scholars aren’t certain exactly how the religious leaders might have “devoured widows’ houses,” but the following story gives us a possibility. The teachers of the law and other religious leaders did not receive a salary for their work, but lived on the charity of the people. Like the televangelists, they could have preyed upon those who were really in no position to support them, like widows. In the second story Jesus points out a widow who gives everything she has to the temple treasury. While we may be tempted to uphold her as an example of self-sacrificial giving, we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that she is living under or within a religious system in which she feels it necessary to give all she has to live on.

So let us respect and honor this widow for her act of generosity, but let us not celebrate the unjust system that has pressured her into giving all she has to live on. Let us not say to those who are poor that their poverty does not really matter, that what really matters is spiritual things. Let us not use this poor widow to say that the church should not be involved in politics. It is often said that we should love the sinner but hate the sin. In this case we should love the saint but hate the system.

So Jesus warns us of the hypocrisy of the wealthy and the religious elites. He warns us against false and empty demonstrations of righteousness. They put on the appearance of righteousness while upholding a system that bleeds the poor dry. But where is the alternative? Where can we find a true demonstration of righteousness?

Last week we saw that the love of God and neighbor is at center of Jesus’ critique of the religious leaders. After several religious leaders challenge Jesus’ authority, someone who is impressed by Jesus’ answers asks, “What is the greatest commandment.” Jesus responds “The most important one is this … ‘Love the Lord your God’ … The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” So Jesus’ criticizes the religious authorities and the wealthy elites because they put on an appearance of righteousness, they appear to love God, but they fail to love their neighbor. And if they fail to love their neighbor, then they cannot truly love God.

In the next story, the story that precedes our text for this morning, Jesus turns the tables on his interrogators. He asks the crowds, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the Son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”

When you read this passage, do you wonder, “What in the world is Jesus talking about? What is this all about?” Well, I have been making the case that this whole section is about the true nature of authority, the authority of Jesus, the Messiah. Here we have the Lord, that is, God, Yahweh, speaking to David’s Lord, the Messiah, telling him to take his place on his heavenly throne. The Messiah’s authority is based upon his righteousness.

We normally think of righteousness as good and right and moral behavior. But righteousness in the biblical sense is a declaration of our status before God. It is a declaration that we are right with God. Right behavior, loving behavior, then flows out of our relationship with God. Loving behavior is authoritative behavior not only because it is generative, but because it flows from our relationship with the being from which all things derive their being.

Earlier in this section the religious leaders begin their challenges of Jesus in 11:28 by asking him, “By what authority are you doing these things? … Who gave you authority to do this?” Jesus doesn’t give them a straight answer, but turns the table on them. But here, in 12:35, Jesus gives them a straight answer. The Messiah is given his authority by God. He received his authority in heaven. Jesus’ authority comes from his standing before God who has given him his throne. His authority comes from his righteousness.

And so the story in Mark goes. Out of that righteousness Jesus acts with loving authority, or with authoritative love. He has returned to Jerusalem to reclaim the throne of David, but he does so not by taking up a sword, but by taking up a cross. And as he predicted, the chief priests and teachers of the law arrest him and hand him over to the Romans. He is mocked and beaten and lifted up on a cross. He dies and is buried. But when some of the women come three days later to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, they find an angel at the tomb who says, “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Looking back on all this, the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains that the actions Jesus took in Jerusalem were mirrored by things that happened in heaven. On earth Jesus entered into Jerusalem, he cleansed the temple, and then he offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. In heaven, through this same death, Jesus entered the true temple for he entered into the very presence of God. In verse 24 it says “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. … he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

The teachers of the Law made an appearance, a show, of righteousness in the temple courts with their flowing robes and their long prayers. But true righteousness appeared in heaven in bodily form in the resurrected Jesus. And through his righteousness Jesus now invites all to have faith in him and so to be joined to him. Those who are joined to him by faith are considered righteous by God. God declares us to be right with him. He forgives our sins and remembers them no more. Having been joined to Jesus through faith, having been made righteous by his loving sacrifice, we are thus called to live out of the righteousness granted to us by the grace and mercy of God.

You see, when we try to be righteous ourselves, when we try to of our own efforts to obey God and to be good people, we often end up like the teachers of the law. We end up putting up an appearance of righteousness. But God can always see through our flowing robes and our “long prayers.” He knows that we are not perfect. He knows that we are still sinful. But yet he has come to us in Jesus and through Jesus he forgives our sins and declares that we are righteous. And having been declared righteous, being sure that we are in good standing before God, we are freed from the necessity of all pretense. We don’t have to appear to be righteous. Instead we are freed to love. We are freed to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. And we are freed to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

[Children’s sermon] When I was young I remember sometimes I didn’t like the rules my parents had, or understand why they had the rules that they had. Sometimes I would ask, “Why do I have to go to bed at 9:00? Why can’t I stay up until 9:30? Why do I have to eat my vegetables? Why do I have to clean my room?” Sometimes my parents had reasons for why they made the rules they made. But even if they told me those reasons, sometimes I would ask again, “But why?” When I did that my parents would sometimes respond with, “Because I said so.”

Now as a child, I never liked this answer very much. It never really told me why I had to do something or why I couldn’t do something. But as a parent, I have come to understand why parents say this. I have sometimes told Evan or Elise, “Because I said so,” when they have asked why they have to follow a rule.

When parents say, “Because I said so,” here is what I think they often mean. As a parent I want to do what is best for my child. It is your parent’s job to do what is best for you. They love you and want you to grow up to be the best person you can be. They make rules because they think to become the best person you can be means you need certain things like enough sleep, and good food. You also need to learn to behave in certain ways, with kindness and respect and so on. When they say “Because I said so,” it means because of their experience, because they are older, they believe that following this rule will be good for you, and will help you become the best person you can be. In short, they make these rules because they love you.

In the Gospel of Mark, Mark tells of one time when a teacher of the law came up to Jesus and asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus answers, “The most important one is “Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There are no more important commands than these.” You see, love is the greatest commandment because all the other commandments help us learn how to love God and to love others. And love is the greatest commandment because God made all the commandments so that we could be the best people we can be. So we are. So we should obey the most important commandments to love God and our neighbor because God said so, which means because God loves us and wants us to be the best people we can be. [End of Children’s Sermon]

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Of all the stories Mark tells in his gospel we might be most tempted to lift this story out of its context and hold it up as something that stands on its own. We might think that the command to love God and neighbor has no “context” because it is the context for everything else. Jesus says love is the first, the greatest, the most important commandment. In Matthew’s version Jesus says that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. The Apostle Paul proclaimed that love is the fulfillment of the law. Love is thus the basis for everything else. But when we pull this out of context and we ask “Why is love the greatest commandment?”, we get an answer that is like, “Because I told you so.” Without a context, we can’t see the true importance of God’s command to love.

Last week I argued that Jesus redefined, or corrected the common definition of the Kingdom of God in the first half of the gospel and of the “Messiah” in the previous section of the gospel. This week’s lesson comes in the next section of the Gospel which I believe has to do with the nature of authority and the appropriate response to authority. This section begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey as the crowds proclaim him the Messiah– Jesus thus makes a claim to authority while critiquing our notion of authority. The section ends with Jesus’ teaching about the end times which centers around the return of the Messiah and the establishment of the Kingdom – again it is about authority.

But Mark’s teaching on the nature of authority has two sides. First the true and good example of authority in Jesus, and second Jesus’ critique of the false and wicked example of authority in the Jewish religious leaders. After entering Jerusalem Jesus clears out the temple of those selling animals and trading money. His sermon at the end of the section in chapter 13 begins with a prophecy of the literal destruction of the temple. In the middle of the section are several stories in which the religious leaders confront Jesus around issues of authority while he is teaching in the temple. The whole section is thus steeped in Jesus’ critique of the Jewish leaders and the religious system they uphold which is centered in the temple.

So Jesus establishes his authority and he critiques the authority of the Jewish leaders, but why? Because they bear no fruit. Because they do not have the appropriate response to God’s authority. The story of the cleansing of the temple is surrounded by the story of the fig tree that bears no fruit. This is soon followed by the parable of the tenants who fail to provide the owner of the vineyard with the fruit they are required to provide. There is no time to defend this now, but I will next week, but let me suggest that Mark evokes Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard from Isaiah 5. Isaiah draws an image of Israel as a vineyard planted by God. He then says, “Then [God] looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. … he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” The fruit God and Jesus look for is the righteous and just behavior of God’s people, but they only produce bad fruit.

Mark thus invites us to understand the greatest commandments, the commandments to love God and to love our neighbor, in the context of authority and our response to God’s authority. God, you see, exercises the authority of love so that we respond in kind. When love forms the foundation of our actions, we produce the fruit of justice and righteousness.

So what do love and authority have to do with each other? How does understanding God’s command to love him and our neighbor in the context of authority help us? Andy Crouch defines authority as the capacity to take meaningful action.[1] Parents have innate authority because they are responsible for raising their children. Many of the actions they take with respect to their children are authoritative actions because they have an effect on the children for good or for ill. They are meaningful actions. A worker in a widget factory who just presses a button to start or stop a conveyor belt has little authority. His actions are constrained. They have little meaning.

But what makes an action meaningful, or for that matter good? What determines if the authority we exercise is good or not? Well let’s think about the word “authority” for a bit. Authority is related to the word “author.” To have authority, or at least good authority, is to author something. It is to be creative. An action is meaningful if it is creative in some way. If my preaching inspires you to love God and your neighbor more, then I am preaching with authority. As a parent we hope to sort of be co-authors of our children’s lives. We do what we do so that they grow and become who God desires them to be. Parents want to contribute to the ongoing creation of the persons our children are becoming. Good authority is thus generative and it leads to the flourishing of others.

We can therefore see the close connection between authority and love, for what is more generative than love. In the beginning God spoke with both authority and love as he formed space in this universe for life to spring out of the seas and out of the ground. He spoke with loving authority as he made humankind in his image and told them to be fruitful and multiply and to act, like God, as God’s representatives with loving authority over the rest of creation.

Mark places this story in the midst of stories about Jesus’ authority, and stories about Jesu’s critique of the Jewish leader’s authority, to say that love is that which forms the basis of true and good authority. Love is the basis for all true and good meaningful action.

But what about false and evil meaningful action? There is not time to spell all this out in detail, but the surrounding stories demonstrate that false and evil authority is based on fear, selfishness, hatred, lack of compassion, on a host of things other than love. False authority thus leads not to generativity, but to degeneration, dissolution, fragmentation, and breakdown. True authority leads to justice and righteousness; false authority to injustices and oppression.

Jesus embodies this critique when he clears out the temple of the money changers and those selling sacrificial animals. You know that if you go to an event like a concert or a big football game, the price of parking climbs higher and higher the closer you go. And if you buy a hotdog in the stadium it costs twice as much as at the vendor on the street. The money changers and those selling animals are in the temple because pilgrims who have travelled far need temple coins for their offerings and animals for their sacrifices. Those who live near the temple by would be able to bring their own animals and would have an opportunity to change their money elsewhere. But the pilgrims must pay a premium price to worship. Jesus is mad not only because this activity disrupts the prayer and worship in the temple but also because the pilgrims coming to the temple are being ripped off. The temple system is unjust because it is based on profits and power rather than on loving authority.

So love forms the basis of true authority because authority and love are both generative and creative. What then is the appropriate response to God’s loving authority? The word authority is also related to the word authorize. God not only uses his authority over us to command certain things, he uses his loving authority to authorize our actions. We were made in God’s image and so the appropriate response to God’s authority is to exercise authority as he does. The point of being made in his image is that we are authorized to act in his image.

My friends, God so desires us to be the best people we can be. Let us therefore love him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And let us love our neighbors as ourselves. In doing so we will carry out meaningful action in loving authority as God’s authorized agents in the world. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Silence]

Almighty God, we love you for you are good and kind and faithful and merciful to us and to all people. In Christ Jesus your love became embodied in flesh and blood. Grant us the gift of your Spirit so that we might imitate Christ Jesus in all we do and so love our neighbors as ourselves. For it is in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] This morning’s gospel reading has a lot to do with seeing, with sight, with how we see things. So what do you see in this picture (a stack of money)? Now some people just see a bunch of money, but if I were to tell you that I would give you all this money, then what would you “see”? Some people would see all the stuff they might buy with this money. They might see some shoes they have wanted, maybe some toys, maybe they would see some special snacks they would buy. But other people might see what they could do with this money. Maybe they would see someone who was sick and the medicine this money could buy for them. Maybe they would see someone who was hungry and the meal this money could buy for them. Maybe they would see someone who didn’t have a home, and they would see a place for them to stay.

In the gospel of Mark Jesus has told his disciples that he is the Christ, which means he is the Son of David. It means he is the King of Israel (holds up a crown). Last week we read a story about the disciples James and John. When they saw Jesus’ as the King they asked Jesus if they could sit at his right hand and his left hand when he became King. That meant that they wanted some of Jesus’ power. They wanted other people to look up at them and honor them. They wanted to be able to tell other people what to do. When they see Jesus’ crown, they see a chance for their own power.

This morning we will read that when Jesus went through Jericho, he passed by a blind man named Bartimaeus. Now even though Bartimaeus couldn’t see, he knew Jesus was the King, so he shouted out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus stopped and asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And Bartimaeus said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” So who do you think truly saw Jesus as he truly was? James and John? Or blind Bartimaeus? [End of children’s sermon]

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“What do you want me to do for you?” It is not only interesting to note, but significant, that Jesus asks this question not only of Bartimaeus, but also of James and John. With this question Mark links our story from this morning with the preceding story which we read last week. Notice also the repetition of “Son.” Jesus, the Son of David asks Bartimaeus, the Son of Honor, and James and John, the Sons of Thunder, “What do you want me to do for you?” Mark links these stories. He wants us to read them side by side, so let’s compare and contrast them a bit.

Let me also invite you to look at this passage, or rather these two passages from two different perspectives. First we can look at these passages from the perspective of those who seek Jesus out. Second, we can look at these passages from Jesus’ perspective. The first may reveal something about ourselves, the second something about how we ought to follow Jesus.

So first, from the perspective of those who seek Jesus out. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” How would you answer if Jesus asked you? It is a revealing question if you think about it. Last week we saw how fear can reveal our deepest desires, but so can Jesus’ question. James and John want seats of power. Bartimaeus wants to see. We also get a sense of what each person in these stories desires by how they address Jesus. James and John come to Jesus and say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Bartimaeus calls out from the side of the road. He gets pushed back down and told to be quiet, but he calls out all the louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me?” So how are you addressing Jesus? What do you want Jesus to do for you? What are your deepest desires?

So why do you seek Jesus out? “What do you want [Jesus] to do for you?” What is the purpose of religion for you? For it is through religious practices that we seek Jesus out. It is through religious practices that we worship God. We come to church to read God’s scriptures, to pray to him, to confess our sins and receive his mercy. But what is the point of it all? Why are you here? What do you seek? Do you seek solace from a busy week? Are you looking for some nice words to think about and maybe make you believe that this world isn’t as bad as it sometimes seems? Are you looking to get some sense of approval from God? Are you looking to be healed? Forgiven? Or maybe you just like being with other people you call friends. What is the point of it all?

According to Jesus the point of it all is the Kingdom of God. Mark sums up Jesus’ ministry several times by saying that Jesus’ went through the towns healing the sick and proclaiming the good news of Kingdom of God. Jesus begins many of his parables with the words, “The kingdom of God is like.” There aren’t many parables in the Gospel of Mark, but every single one of them, whether or not they begin with “The kingdom of God is like,” is about the Kingdom of God. We may have come here for a variety of reasons, but Jesus gathers us here because of the Kingdom of God.

But what is the Kingdom of God? What is the Kingdom of God like? I have argued over the past weeks that this section in Mark, which ends with the healing of Bartimaeus and began with Jesus telling his disciples that he is the Christ, is all about Jesus redefining what Christ, what Messiah, and thus what King means. Jesus has come not as a revolutionary warrior to fight the Romans, but as the Lamb of God to take up a cross. And so as Jesus redefines what he means by Messiah, the Son of David, he continues his redefinition of the Kingdom of God found in his parables and his other teachings in the first half of the gospel.

The problem with James and John is that when they hear the Kingdom of God, they stop with the word Kingdom and then insert “of Israel” in place of God. They are seeking a worldly kingdom: A kingdom like all the other kingdoms of the world, except that they expect God to be on their side. How often do we do the same thing? In our prayer of confession, we have been praying, “We too often ask you to bless what we do rather than seeking to do what you bless.” How often do we go about our business, building or managing our own kingdoms and then turn to God and ask him to bless our work? How often do we ask if what we are doing actually lines up with the values, the goals, and, and this is important, the methods of the Kingdom of God? How often do we assume that expanding the power and influence of the church is equal to the expansion of the Kingdom of God on earth? How often, like James and John, do Christians seek positions of power and prestige for themselves or for the church and assume that they are serving the Kingdom?

What I have been trying to argue over the past weeks is that the method of Jesus’ ministry is not only just as important as the goal of his ministry, it is part and parcel of the goal of his ministry. He refuses to take up worldly power and instead submits to it through the cross not only to overcome the powers of sin and death that rampage over this world, but to demonstrate the very nature of the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ method, the cross, is not just a means to an end, it is a mark of the Kingdom of God. It is an example of the Kingdom. No, more so, it is a manifestation of the Kingdom. The cross is an instance of the Kingdom of God.

But for some reason Christians throughout the ages have forgotten this. We seem to think that the nature of the Kingdom of God changed once Jesus ascended to his throne in heaven. We seem to think that all that sacrificial stuff was just about getting our sins forgiven and not about what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. We seem to think a lot like James and John who come seeking a share in Jesus’ power. But Jesus only promises them a share in his suffering and in his service, for that is the true nature of the Kingdom of God.

So we can come to Jesus like James and John, seeking a share in Jesus’ power and glory and honor. Or, we can come to Jesus like Bartimaeus, saying “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” We can come to Jesus knowing that we are in need of Jesus, that we are in need of God, and that we are in need of mercy. Bartimaeus comes to Jesus knowing he is blind, His deepest desire is to see. Do we come knowing that we are blind? Is our deepest desire to see? Do we know what our deepest need is?

Now at this point we have to be careful. We can spiritualize Bartimaeus’ blindness and so dismiss it. Christians have too often spiritualized the poor person’s poverty, and the lame person’s disability only to dismiss them. Christians have too often seen the physical needs of the people in the gospels simply as symbols of our supposedly “true” and “deeper” spiritual needs. We all sing with John Newton, “I was blind but now I see,” knowing that Newton was never physically blind, but spiritually blind. It tells of Newton’s conversion to faith in Christ. So we tell ourselves that we don’t have to worry about physical blindness, or physical poverty, for the Kingdom of God is a spiritual reality.

The problem is that if we spiritualize the stories of Jesus’ healings, we miss the radical nature of the Kingdom of God. Jesus was not just converting people in a religious sense so that they might follow him. He was releasing them from a religious system that was also a social system that oppressed them. People assumed the blind, the lame, the deaf, and the poor were in those situations because of their own sin. They assumed that such people were unrighteous. Many of them were unclean according to the cleanliness laws and so ostracized from the community. People assumed that they were not a part of the true people of God and thus would be left out of God’s kingdom when it came. But Jesus proclaimed that the good news of the Kingdom was not only that it was coming, but that it belonged to such as these, the poor, the blind, the lame, and to sinners.

When we spiritualize Jesus’ healings, then we can easily come to Jesus from the perspective of James and John. We can take on all the trappings of religion. We can appear to be a devout follower of Jesus. We can make it appear that our deepest desire is to serve God and the Kingdom. But our deepest desire will be for a kingdom not like the Kingdom of God, but like any other kingdom of this world. Richard Rhor, a Franciscan Friar and author, has famously said, “Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.” By appearing religious, saying all the right things, singing all the right songs, we can appear to be followers of Jesus, while we hide from God. And we hide from God because we avoid all the places God shows up. For God and Jesus keep showing up by the side of slaves, in the midst of the poor, healing the blind, and sitting at table with sinners.

But Jesus heals Bartimaeus physically, socially, and spiritually. The blind man, more than any of the disciples, saw Jesus for who he was: the Son of David who came to have mercy on the poor and the outcast. Jesus therefore heals Bartimaeus not only so that he can physically see, but also that he can freely follow Jesus and join the new community of the Kingdom of God forming around Jesus. As with all those he healed, Jesus gives Bartimaeus a new spiritual life as well as new physical life. The kingdoms of this world separate the spiritual from the physical and then use the spiritual as a means to worldly power. They appear religious, but they use religion to seek a seat to the right and left of the king. The Kingdom of God, however, joins the spiritual and the physical and advances in this world not through worldly power, but through worldly weakness.

So what do you want Jesus to do for you? Do you want him to affirm and bless your desires for power, or prestige, or success? Are you coming to him like James and John, asking, “Do for me whatever I ask?” Or are you coming to him like Bartimaeus? “Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me?” Are you coming to him recognizing your need for him? Do you admit your dependence on him?

That’s the question these texts ask us if we approach them from the perspective of those who come to Jesus. But what do these texts ask us if we approach them from the perspective of Jesus? They ask us how are we going to follow Jesus. How are we going to serve Jesus and the kingdom? What is the method of our ministry?

James and John seek positions of power and so they hope to serve Jesus from positions of power. But Jesus tells them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right and left is not for me to grant.” You will, in other words be led into suffering and service if you follow me for “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Power is the method of the kingdoms of this world; service and suffering are the methods of the Kingdom of God.

And that brings us back to Jesus’ question. “What do you want me to do for you?” is a question a King may ask a loyal subject, but it is also a question a servant asks a master. Throughout the gospel, Jesus almost never initiates contact with individual people. He preaches and teaches to large groups, but individuals come to him. When he gets into disputes with the Pharisees or the Sadducees, they come to him seeking to trap him with a question. When he heals someone, they come to him or are brought to him by friends. The only exception is the man in the Synagogue with the withered hand whom Jesus heals to demonstrate that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. The only individuals Jesus approaches are the disciples he calls to follow him.

As we have seen, Jesus method of brining in the Kingdom is through sacrifice and through service, but it is also through invitation. Through his preaching and teaching and healing, Jesus invited all to join with this new community of the Kingdom of God and to follow him. Now that Jesus reigns in heaven, we who follow Jesus, are God’s invitation to others to enter into this new community of the Kingdom and to follow Jesus. How are we living as invitations for others to see Jesus? How are we living as invitations for other to see Jesus as Immanuel, the God who came to be with us? Invitations to see Jesus as the Lord who came to serve. Invitations to see Jesus as the King who came to heal. Invitations to see Jesus as the Lamb who came to give his life as a ransom for many. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Silence] Merciful God, you sent Jesus among us to seek and save the lost, to heal the sick, to let the oppressed go free, to give sight to the blind. Grant that we, like Bartimaeus, may readily see Jesus as the Son of David, joyfully receive his mercy, and eagerly follow him as our Lord and Savior. May our lives point others to Christ and to his kingdom. For it is in his name that we pray. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] Fall is finally here. The leaves are turning color. It is getting colder out. The sun goes down earlier and comes up later. That means that a certain fall holiday is coming soon. Halloween is right around the corner. What are some of the things people do on Halloween?

People do all kinds of things for Halloween, but a lot of the things have something in common. People do a lot of scary things for Halloween. People dress up as ghosts or witches and monsters. They decorate their yards or their walls with grave stones and skeletons. People go to haunted houses. Maybe they watch scary movies. I never quite understood this, but some people like to be scared. Do you like to be scared? Do you like scary things?

What do you do when you are scared? What helps you when you are afraid? When I am afraid, I like to be find someone else to be with. When I was young I would find my mom or dad or maybe my older brother. When you are afraid it helps just to be with someone else, but what really helps is to be with someone who loves you. The Bible tells us in 1 John 4:18 that “perfect love drives out fear.” When we know that someone loves us, we know that someone cares for us. We know that we are not alone. And that helps drive away our fear. Now our parents and grandparents love us lots, but what really drives out fear is perfect love, and only God loves us perfectly. So if you are ever afraid, find someone who loves you, and then let their love for you remind you of God’s perfect love for you. [End of Childern’s Sermon]

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If you will recall from the previous weeks, Jesus has openly admitted to his followers that he is the Christ. He has laid claim to the throne of David. He is the rightful King of Israel. His disciples and his followers therefore dream of major changes coming to pass in their lives and in the fortunes of Israel. A Messiah means that God is going to act to save his people. A Messiah means that Israel’s enemies will be overcome. A Messiah means that Israel will be freed from her oppressors.

But Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem with nothing. He has a band of disciples and some followers, but they are not armed. He has no army. A shadow of fear falls upon his followers and envelops them like an early morning fog. For his part Jesus seems to be of little help. He doesn’t calm their fears. He doesn’t tell them how God will send a heavenly host of angels to fight for them. Instead, he names their worst fear: he tells them for the third time that he will be betrayed into the hands of the religious leaders and crucified. What then, his followers wonder, will happen to them? Are not those who follow him in danger as well? If Jesus is arrested as a subversive revolutionary, what is to prevent the authorities from arresting and crucifying his followers? If claiming to be the Messiah is treasonous, is not following a Messiah also treasonous?

We read the gospel stories so often and they are so familiar to us that we easily skim over the depth of the drama. When we read that Jesus is heading for Jerusalem while openly claiming to be the rightful King of Israel, do we appreciate the danger he and his followers are in? We know how the story turns out so it is easy to dismiss the disciples’ fear as just short sightedness, and perhaps willful ignorance. Hasn’t Jesus told them that he will rise again after dying? But how many of us who believe in Jesus resurrection, who believe that we will be raised to life after we die could face imminent death without fear? For that matter, how do we face the fears we have?

So what are our greatest fears? We don’t live in fear of repression by an imperial army. We don’t live in fear of being crucified. But it seems to me that the climate in the United States has been one of growing fear ever since 9/11. I suppose it is understandable that we fear the possibility of a terrorist attacks more than we did 20 years ago. But there are a host of other fears that are greater now than they were 20 years ago that have nothing to do with 9/11. Even though crime rates have dropped over all, people are more afraid of violent crime. Roxann and I let Evan and Elise walk the 6 blocks to South Side Elementary school ten years ago, but recently I have read stories in which parents have been accused of neglect at such behavior.

During President Obama’s tenure, many conservatives stoked fears of socialism – the government is going to take over your health care, the government is going to tax you to death – and by the way, Obama is really a Muslim who has sympathies for ISIS. Today many on the left fear the erosion of our democratic institutions, the freedom of the press, and war with Iran or North Korea. President Trump regularly stokes the fears of his supporters of the danger of the immigrants crossing our borders, of trade deals that decimate our industry, and, of course, the ever-present threat of terrorists. And just this past month the specter of the catastrophic effects of global warming yet to come made landfall with hurricanes Florence and Michael. We live in a fog of fear.

So what are your greatest fears? Perhaps they are among the things I mentioned. Maybe you think some of the things I mentioned are overblown fears, irrational fears. Maybe your greatest fear is more existential. Maybe your faith in God has been challenged by the failures of the church, or by a personal tragedy, or as the truths you grew up with no longer seem to fit with your knowledge of the world. One of my greatest fears is simply this rising tide of fear. Some or many of the fears stoked by the left and the right are baseless. But it is fearsome to think of what people driven by fear may do. People driven by fear think mainly of themselves. They act out of self-preservation. They discount evidence that would counter their fears. People who act out of fear will justify the most egregious of acts.

I bring all this up to make the point that just as we all have our fears, and as we live in a culture of fear, the fear felt by the disciples and Jesus’ followers was real. Mark sets the scene by explicitly drawing our attention to their fear. As Jesus headed toward Jerusalem Mark writes that “the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid.” Mark therefore invites us to examine our fears, to face them, and to ask what do we do with our fears. Do we suppress them? Do we fight them? Do we allow them to drive us? Do we turn them over to God?

Helen Cepero of North Park Theological Seminary writes, “[Fear] is often the place where God wants to meet us. When we are able to enter into our real fears, we find ourselves on the edge of our true desires as well.”[1] It is interesting to note how James and John respond to their fears and reveal their true desires. After Jesus predicts his death, they approach him and say, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” In other words, once you have defeated the Romans and been crowned as the King of Israel, let us be your Secretary of State and your Minister of Defense.

At the edge of their fears James and John reveal their desire for power and position. This is telling because it also reveals how they believe their fear ought to be dealt with. Fear should drive Jesus and his band of followers toward power. The imperial power of Rome must be met with the imperial power of God and his Messiah. Fear exposes our weakness and our vulnerabilities and drives us to seek power and control.

Is this not how fear drives us? The fear of losing the midterms, the fear of impeachment, the fear of losing the next presidential election has led some on the extreme right to raise the specter of civil unrest, even civil war. Those on the extreme left have raised the possibility of expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court to take it back from the conservatives. In Congressional races across the country any hint of someone being willing to compromise with the other side spells the end of a political career. We have turned politics into an all or nothing game. And it is a game of power. Or maybe fear drives us into hiding. Maybe our fears and doubts about God and the church, or about society in general lead us to just give up on it all as we slide into an apathetic agnosticism. Maybe our desire is not for power, but mere escape.

Jesus turns to James and John and he invites them to face their fears and to live through them as they trust in God. “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” They answer that they can and Jesus affirms that they will endure the same cup and the same baptism, but the end result will not be what they expect for Jesus tells them “to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.”

Jesus invites James and John to live through their fears. Jesus says at the end of our passage, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The cup that Jesus drinks is his crucifixion. It is the cup he shares with his disciples at the last supper during the meal that indicates that Jesus is the new Passover Lamb. The way he is going to overcome fear is to live into it and die to it so that God may show his greater power and his greater love by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus leads his followers into a life that is beyond fear for it is a life moved by faith.

The cup Jesus drinks points to his crucifixion while the baptism he undergoes is a baptism of service. At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit anointed Jesus for a ministry. Since his baptism Jesus’ ministry has been one of service to the poor, the outcast, and the vulnerable. He has gathered to himself fishermen, tax-collectors, and zealots to be his disciples. He has healed the sick, given sight to the blind, cured the lame, cleansed the unclean, and eaten with sinners. He has reached out to those who live in fear on the edge of society and said, “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Perfect love casts out fear and welcomes the least of these into community.

The cup that James and John each must drink is thus also the cup of suffering and the baptism that they must each must undergo is a baptism into service. The cup they are to drink and the baptism they are to undergo come from living out the gospel, from following Jesus. For Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

The cup of suffering and the baptism of service are linked. They are two side of the same coin. The imagery surrounding baptism has always involved the imagery of death and rebirth. The Israelites went down into the waters of the Red Sea where the waters swallowed up their Egyptian rulers. In coming up out of the waters they had to put to death their old way of life as slaves and take on their new way of life as children of God. Jonah was baptized through his ordeal in the belly of the fish. His actions and his speech were reborn, but the story ends without answering the question of whether or not his heart followed suit. The apostle Paul teaches that the baptism we receive in Christ is a union with his death as our old selves are put to death and a union with his resurrection as our new selves come to life.

Jesus thus assures James and John that if they continue to follow him then they will experience suffering, but they will also undergo a baptism that leads them through death and into new life. They will undergo a baptism in which their old selves with its desire for power and prestige, will be put to death. But this death will make way for their new selves, through which they will live lives in service to God and the Kingdom, which means they will live as servants to all. When the other disciples heard about Jesus’ conversation with James and John they became indignant. But Jesus said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

How then will James and John face their fears? How will we face our fears? From where will we obtain the courage to put aside our desire for power and control over others? From where will we summon the determination to stand firm rather than to hide away or escape? Cepero writes, “Such courage to face our fears will not come to us because we are brave, but because we know we are loved. … Only by allowing God’s love to meet us at the point of our greatest fear will we move from being people of fear to being people of faith.”

It is the perfect love of God that casts out fear. We can only hope to be a people who remain calm and compassionate, not driven by fear in a culture of fear, if we are a people who know that we are loved. If we are a people who know that we are loved, then we can live out of that love into a life of faith, a life of faithfulness, a life of selfless service to others, a life that proclaims the good news of Jesus and bears witness to the coming Kingdom. Again, Cepero writes, “At the intersection of our deepest fear and greatest desire, God waits for us with the gift of Presence, the hope of grace.” As they walk along to Jerusalem, Jesus is present with the disciples and the followers at the intersection of their greatest fears and their greatest desires. And so Jesus does not call us to face our fears alone. He calls us only to go where he has already gone with the assurance that he remains there with us and of life after death. For Jesus concludes, “even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] What is your favorite color? Well what if that were the only color in the world. What if everything were red? [Pulls out a picture of a butterfly with everything colored red] Or what if everything were blue? [Blue butterfly] or Green? What would you think of a world in which there was only one color? That would be kind of boring wouldn’t it? Isn’t it so much better that God made the world with so many different colors? [picture of butterfly with many colors]

This morning we are celebrating that God made human beings with all kinds of differences. We have different color hair, different color eyes and different color skin. Human beings also don’t live all in the same place or do things the same way. We live in different countries. We speak different languages. We wear different styles of clothing. And that is part of what makes human beings so beautiful.

Now I know that all of you were born here in the United States. But I think that you all have one or two parents or one or more grandparents who were born in another country. Is that true? Where were they born? Well that is part of what makes you each beautiful. God made us all different but yet we are all the same in at least one way. We are all God’s children. And he loves no matter where we come from or what we look like or what language we speak. [End Children’s Sermon]

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We live in divided times. There are many people who are waiting in lines for days at the borders of the United States hoping for a chance to seek asylum here. Others wait in their homes for visa applications to come through, worried that some minor mistake will cause their application to be thrown out. They hear many in this country saying, “You are not one of us.” Many women, particularly those who have survived abuse, watched the Senate judiciary committee hearings on Judge Kavanaugh this week, and they heard a room full of white men saying, “You are not one of us.” When African Americans watch as yet another police officer is acquitted after shooting a young black man to death, they hear America saying, “You are not one of us.” We are divided – Republicans and Democrats; White and Black; Mexican and American. There are so many ways we say to each other, “You are not one of us.”

In such a time gathering together on a Sunday morning to celebrate our cultural and ethnic diversity is a political act. It is a political act to celebrate the different ways we grew up, the different foods we eat, the different clothes we wear, and the different languages we speak. It is a political act to recognize cultural and ethnic and national differences and say “this is us,” instead of “You are not one of us.” These differences don’t divide us. In fact, we are united not just in spite of these differences but in and through these differences. A unity that does not unite things that are different is no unity. It is at best conformity and at worst forced uniformity. We thus celebrate our unity by celebrating our diversity. This is a political act when many try to protect unity by pointing at others and saying, “You are not one of us.”

There is a danger, however, of such a celebration becoming merely political. We could celebrate our differences in order to demonstrate to the rest of society that we are not like those other people. We are not like those who fear immigrants and refugees. We are not like those who approve of policies that intimidate asylum seekers or policies that separate children from their parents. We are not like those who fear the watering down of some shared American culture, meaning some European, white American culture. We could celebrate diversity as a means of saying that others are “not one of us.” Or we could celebrate our differences by conforming to a bland tolerance which papers over deeper cultural differences. We could conform to the ideology of tolerance that is so common in our society today. The danger of becoming merely political is that we could become just another voice in the divided politics of our day and the diversity we celebrate will only be skin deep.

Our celebration, however, is not merely political for we celebrate these differences because we worship a God who loves diversity. We worship a God who is so good and so great and so far above us that he can create an infinite variety and still call all things he created, “good.” Our celebration is not merely political because it is theological. It is a witness to the nature of our God and the nature of God’s kingdom. It is a witness to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We celebrate our diversity in the unity of the name of Jesus.

Now, you may be wondering what our text has to do with ethnic and cultural differences. Or how it is in any way political. Well, I will admit that our gospel text does not speak directly to ethnic or cultural differences, but if we take it in its context in Mark’s gospel, it does shed some light on our celebration today, and it is definitely political.

So first, how is our text political? If you remember from last week, Jesus took his disciples to the region around Caesarea Philippi, a city built by Herod the Great’s son, Herod Philip and dedicated to Caesar, the Roman Emperor. At Caesarea Philippi Jesus finally admitted to his disciples that he was Israel’s Messiah, the Christ, the anointed Son of David, that is, the rightful King of the Jews. This was a highly charged political statement. It would be as if Jesus stood at the Lincoln monument in DC and called upon people to follow him as the President of the United States instead of President Trump. To claim to be the King of the Jews was treasonous against the Emperor of Rome and so it could get you crucified.

We saw over the last two weeks how Jesus, in fact, predicted that as the Messiah he would be crucified. If you turn in your bibles to Mark 10:32 you see that Jesus again predicts his crucifixion for a third time. Mark thus sets of this whole section of his gospel by these three predictions. Notice, then, that after the third prediction the disciples fail again to understand the nature of Jesus’ mission. James and John come to Jesus asking to be put at his right and left when he comes into power, that is, after Jesus comes into political power. But Jesus says, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (10:42-44).

This whole section, then is surrounded by explicitly political texts. All that which Jesus says and does, then, as he tries to teach the disciples what it means that he is the Messiah is politically charged. The kingdom Jesus announces is a kingdom that challenges all human kingdoms. And if you are not convinced, then notice how Jesus next enters Jerusalem in such a way to spur the crowds to hail him as the one who brings the “Kingdom of our father David.”

Our text speaks into this politically charged context because it is all about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, the Messiah. In the context of the day, it is therefore all about what it means to be a “righteous Jew” over against the gentiles and other “unrighteous Jews.” You see John is so conditioned by his environment that he assumes the religious paradigm of his day. Throughout the gospel Jesus has been confronting the Pharisees on their exclusive and nationalistic form of Judaism. The Pharisees were all about determining who was truly righteous. They believed that God’s Messiah would come and save his people, but only the truly righteous would be counted as God’s people. Those who were not truly righteous, like sinners and tax collectors, would be left behind. Moreover, the Messiah would not only come to save God’s righteous people but to bring judgment on the enemies of God’s righteous people – the Gentiles and the Romans.

John is still operating within this same nationalistic paradigm. It is a different formula -following Jesus is the key rather than following all the rules that the Pharisees follow – but it is the same paradigm. He is still concerned with figuring out who is in and who is out. Who is “righteous” and who is not. “Teacher,” John says, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” But Jesus says, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.”

Jesus lets John know that he operates by a different paradigm. His kingdom rises above human nationalism and is open to all – Jew and Gentile, sinner and saint, male and female. This is because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who has come to fulfill the role of Israel to be a blessing to the nations. Jesus is the Son of God, the one who created all humanity and who sent Jesus into the world so that all might be reconciled to God once again. All the petty differences and distinctions and boundaries humans create to separate one from another, so that we can say that “he is not one of us,” are cast aside by this Messiah. Instead, he calls all people to put their trust, their allegiance in him. To call him Lord instead of any other person or ideology. And he sets the bar pretty low: “Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.”

This text is political because it calls us to look above our own political horizon to the one true Lord of heaven and earth. But to do that means to operate on a wholly different paradigm. Mark connects this scene to the previous through the repetition of the words “in my name.” Last week we saw that after Jesus’ second prediction of his crucifixion the disciples argue about who is the greatest, who is the closest to Jesus, and so in their paradigm, who is the most righteous. But Jesus teaches them that in his kingdom greatness and righteousness are defined by serving. “Anyone who wants to be first must be very last, and the servant of all.” Jesus then embraces a child and says, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” Jesus’ kingdom is about including those whom this world deems unimportant, those whom this world casts aside, those of whom we say they are “not one of us.” By looking to the Lord of heaven and earth we can embrace all whom he has made.

But this is not the bland tolerance of today’s society. This is not a papering over of major differences in order to form a semblance of unity. For this unity comes “in the name of Jesus.” Jesus says, “no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus says this in the context of John wanting to exclude others, of John operating within the context of the exclusive nationalistic political and religious paradigm of his day. But in Matthew 12:30, when the Pharisees charge Jesus of casting out demons by the power of demons, Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

Jesus says the exact opposite thing but they point to the same truth, they point to the inclusiveness of the kingdom of God, because the contexts are different. When John wants to exclude others, Jesus says, “No, whoever is not against us is for us. My kingdom is about inclusion.” But when the Pharisees say Jesus is of the devil, Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” There is a way, in others words, of setting yourself outside of Jesus’ inclusive Kingdom – by opposing it. “Whoever does not gather with me” Jesus says, “scatters.”

The failure of today’s ideology of tolerance is that it is incapable of making any real judgements. This ideology preaches that all people are to be accepted regardless of any differences. But it quickly falls apart when it faces deep cultural differences. This ideology bumbles and blusters, for instance, when faced with radically fundamentalist Muslim societies and their treatment of women. Should we truly tolerate a culture that prevents the education of women, let alone the ability for women to even function normally in public? Should we tolerate cultures that practice polygamy? I could mention other cultural practices that those who preach this bland tolerance find abhorrent, but I will spare you the details.

This ideology of tolerance falls apart because it has cut itself off from the transcendent. It is a merely human, a merely political ideology and so it has no basis over and above humanity upon which to base its judgements. Ultimately it becomes, like all human ideologies, an ideology of power. What can and can’t be tolerated is determined by whoever shouts the loudest and longest. And so you get the Anarchists facing off against the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, WV.

But we celebrate diversity in the unity of the name of Jesus. Jesus became human so that humanity itself could be remade in the image of God. Jesus acts as the Messiah, the King of the Jews by recognizing the inherent worth of every human he encounters. In his name we recognize that all humans are made in the image of God and are meant to be remade in the image of Christ. We can therefore make judgments. On the one hand we know that behavior and practices and political policies that demean others, which treat others as less than human, will not be tolerated in the Kingdom of God. Such behavior scatters people rather than gathers them. It exploits them rather than protects them. It discards them rather than cherishes them. It is behavior that cannot be done in the name of Jesus.

On the other hand, those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus, deny themselves and take up their cross. Instead of playing the political power games of the kingdoms of this world, we seek to be last and servant of all. Instead of spending our time determining who is in and who is out, we seek out the lost, bind up the broken hearted, and give strength to the weary. In so doing we proclaim the image of God in each and every human being. We can thus celebrate our diversity in the unity of the name of Jesus. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] Have you ever argued with your friends about who was better than the others? Have you ever told someone you were smarter than they were? Or maybe you bragged about how well you play the piano. Or maybe you liked to show off your new dress or your new shoes to someone. Maybe you teased someone because you could run faster than they could. For some reason it makes us feel good when are better than others. And we all feel that way sometimes.

Even the disciples felt that way sometimes. One day they were walking down the road and they were arguing about which one of them was the greatest. And so Jesus told them, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last and servant of all.”

I wonder what Jesus meant by that. To be the best, do you have to be the worst? Or maybe he just meant that to be the best in his kingdom means not caring if you are the best. It makes me think of my nephew. Last year he joined the cross country team in high school. Cross country is where you run a really long race against 30 or 40 other kids. Well he was running in a race one time when he came upon another boy who had stopped running. He had ran so hard he didn’t think he could go on anymore. Well, my nephew could have kept running. He could have kept on going and felt good about himself because there was one more runner that he had beat. But he didn’t. He stopped, turned around and said to the boy, “Come on, you can do it. I will run with you.” And even though it took him longer to finish the race, my nephew ran with the other boy just to help him finish the race.

I don’t know if my nephew came in last place or not, but he for sure didn’t come in first place. He didn’t even beat his own time, but I think Jesus would have awarded him first place because he was a servant to the other boy. [End Children’s Sermon]

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For years the editors of Chimes, the student newspaper at Calvin College, published a spoof edition once a year. Sometimes the spoof would be just like another edition of the newspaper. At other times they would spoof different publications. One year they published TheBananer, a spoof of the denomination’s magazine, The Banner. When Roxann and I were at Calvin, they published a spoof edition of the Academic Course Catalogue. In it they note that anyone from the community could audit a course for $15, a 96% reduction of the cost of tuition. “This means,” they wrote, “that over the course of a four-year period, students pay $480 for the knowledge and learning and $23,728 for the credit.”

I don’t suppose I need to tell a room half full of graduate students and professors that our education system in the United States values the practical and pragmatic aspects of education over and above the actual education. What matters is not what a student learns and how their understanding of the world and others is expanded by that knowledge, but only if students can get a good paying job at the end of the day. What matters is not expanding our knowledge of the universe, but if our knowledge can lead to new and profitable innovations in the research park.

We tend to do something similar with Jesus. We tend to think that what really matters when it comes to Jesus is that he died on the cross to save our sins. That is the degree, the document, the deed that determines our future. Faith in Jesus is pragmatic. We believe in order to be saved. We sometimes look upon his life and ministry as if it were all just preliminary stuff he had to go through in order to get to the cross. Sure, maybe his life and ministry are examples for us. We too must be nice to others. We too should help out those who are poor and sick. We too should preach the good news that Jesus died on the cross to save us. Sure, we can learn a thing or two about how God wants us to behave from looking at Jesus, but what is most important is that we are forgiven of our sins because he died on the cross. What is most important is that we have everlasting life, we are redeemed, we are saved by the cross.

Last week I hope we got a sense that the cross goes a bit deeper than that. Last week I hope we got a sense that the cross was more than just a transaction in which an innocent Jesus became the sacrificial lamb in order to pay the price for our sins. Last week we saw that Jesus took on the role of the Suffering Servant from the book of Isaiah. The Suffering Servant is a figure in the second half of Isaiah who undergoes God’s punishment of Israel with and for Israel. In the midst of exile, the Suffering Servant remains faithful and obedient to God. He keeps trusting in God even as Jerusalem lies in ruins and God’s people live as exiles in a foreign land. Through the Suffering Servant, then, God comes to his people to give them words of comfort and hope in the midst of their exile.

Jesus takes on the role of the Suffering Servant not just to explain what he is doing in the event of the cross, but to demonstrate his way of being with Israel throughout his life. Mark highlights the fact that Israel remains in a kind of exile during Jesus’ day right from the beginning of the gospel. Israel remains under the rule of the pagan Romans, but John the Baptist comes and preaches at the river Jordan, at the place where Israel first crossed over into the land of Canaan under Joshua, and supposedly where the Israelites returned from exile in Babylon. Mark characterizes John’s ministry as the prophet who announces the end of Israel’s exile: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way [of return] – a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” Like the Suffering Servant, Jesus’ ministry is a ministry to a people in exile. It is therefore a ministry of faithful obedience and trust in God in the midst of that exile.

The opening line of Mark’s gospel states, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The word gospel means “good news,” but it was often used with regard to royal propaganda. It meant “the official decree of good news.” Mark’s “official decree of good news” is that Jesus is the Christ, the Jewish Messiah. The good news is that the King of Israel has returned. The line of David is about to be restored. That means that the exile is soon to be over.

This, however, sets Jesus in immediate opposition with Caesar, the emperor of Rome. Only Caesar could appoint someone as King over the Jews, and he had, his own puppet, Herod. But just to drive the point home, Mark adds that Jesus is “the Son of God,” for Caesar himself was claimed to be and was worshipped as “the son of god.” It is no surprise then that the nationalistic wing of the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, soon team up with those leaders who colluded with the Romans, the Herodians. In chapter 3:6 Mark reports, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

Mark announces right from the beginning that Jesus is the Christ, but with regard to the characters in the gospel, everyone wonders who he is. They ask “Who is this?” (4:41) “What is this? A new teaching and with authority?” (2:27) “Why does this fellow talk like that [and claim to forgive sins]? (2:7) “Where did this man get these things? … Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” Everyone wonders if Jesus is the Messiah. People report to Herod and the disciples tell Jesus that some think he is John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others one of the prophets. Finally Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter affirms, “You are the Christ.”

Of course everyone is asking this question because Jesus is not living up to the expectations of being the Jewish Messiah. He is not a warrior like King David. He has no army. He has not started a rebellion. Instead he has welcomed sinners and tax collectors into his company. He has healed the blind and the lame. He has cast out demons and fed the hungry. He has ministered to both Jew and Gentile. The first half of the gospel answers the question of Jesus identity, but with a twist. He is the Jewish Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God, who has come to redeem God’s people from exile, but God’s people includes the Gentiles, and sinners, and tax-collectors, and maybe even the Pharisees. Jesus is the Messiah, but he redefines what it means to be the Messiah.

Let me suggest that the second half of Mark’s gospel turns on the question of how Jesus will bring both Jews and Gentiles out of exile. Jesus redefines how the Messiah will fulfill his mission. Last week we read that after Peter proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus began to tell disciples plainly that he must go up to Jerusalem to be betrayed into the hands of the Romans, killed, and be raised on the third day. This morning we read how he told them the same thing a second time. And Jesus tells the disciples this again a third time in 10:32. Now anytime something happens three times in a biblical story we should know it is significant. Jesus, however, doesn’t just tell his disciples about the coming cross to give them advance warning. He tells them that he is going to Jerusalem to be killed in order to show them that this is his way of being with God’s people. This is his way of completing his mission. And so it must be their way of being with others if they wish to follow him. He said it plainly in last week’s passage: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (8:34)

After each of the next two times Jesus predicts his death, he teaches his disciples what the cross means for how they are to be shaped by the cross as they live in the world. In our lesson today the disciples argue about which of them was the greatest. IN verse 35 Jesus sits them down and says, “‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and servant of all.’ He then took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’”

The disciples argue about who is on the top of the totem pole, but they are not simply concerned about which individual is better than all the others. They are concerned about a game of power. Each one wants to make sure he gets the respect and honor he deserves. Some of us were talking the other day about how honor and respect and therefore power is determined by age within many Asian societies. In order to relate to someone properly, you have to know if they are older or younger than you. And, generally speaking, the leader of any group must be someone who is among the oldest in the group.

In Jesus’ day society ran according to a host of patron-client relationships. People with power and prestige handed out favors to those with less power and prestige in return for loyalty and services. The disciples are arguing about where each of them fits within the social ranking of the group. Who deserves to be honored and served by the others, and which one has the power and prestige to hand out favors. My guess is they were arguing about who was closest to Jesus. Should Thomas buddy up to Peter or John in order to curry favor with Jesus?

Jesus, however, turns this system on its head. He says the greatest in the kingdom of God is not the one who stands above others and hands out favors. The greatest is not the one who lends you an air of respectability and social standing. No, the greatest is the last person, the one at the bottom of the social ranking. The greatest is the one who serves everyone and has no power or prestige to hand out favors. If the disciples were to have a dinner party, they would want to invite the most respected people in their community so that they would be seen to be on their social level. Their social ranking would increase even more if they then received an invitation in return to attend a party given by one of these social elites. But Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” If you want to curry my favor, if you want to get close to me, invite someone to your party with no social standing. Invite someone to your party who is powerless and cannot pay you back.

Our gospel lesson this morning begins with Jesus telling his disciples that the way he is going to fulfill his mission is to give up his power. He is going to submit to the powers of the religious leaders, the powers of Rome, and even the power of death. He does so because sin has to do with power. We sin when we exert our own power over against others. We sin when we seek to trust in our own power instead of in God. But Jesus overcomes sin by submitting to its power and dying so that he can be raised again on the third day. We are saved by the cross because through it Jesus takes on the guilt of our sin and also because Jesus overcomes the power of sin. Jesus plays be the rules of the kingdom rather than by the rules of the world.

Jesus took on the guilt of our sin and overcame the power of sin so that we might come out of exile and back into communion with God. But the world is in many ways still living in exile from God. The world still functions as though being the best and the greatest is what really matters. Nations still struggle to make themselves great. CEO’s run their companies as though profit and beating the competition takes precedent over caring for the environment, paying workers a living wage, and providing the benefits people need for a full life. And individuals continue to be imprisoned by the idols of success and money.

But Jesus frees us from all the power games we are tempted to play in our lives. He frees us from wondering, like the disciples, who among us is the greatest, or who among us is the richest, or who among us is the most brilliant. But he not only frees us from those things, he frees us to live freely for others. Instead of spending our time and energy vying for power and seeking the favor of those who have more power, Jesus invites us to live our lives shaped by his cross. He invites us to use the power we have to serve others. He invites us to use the power we have for the sake of the powerless. He invites us to demonstrate our trust and obedience and hope in the power of God rather than in the powers of this world. We thus come alongside those who have been defeated, or oppressed, or given up in the face of the power games of this world. Like my nephew we stop and run a different race. We walk along with the least of these and so give them comfort and hope as we point them to the cross of Christ. Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him for he took up his cross and gave up his power for us.

[Children’s sermon] So one of the reasons we come to church is to be with God, right? Well, if God is in heaven, maybe we could get closer to God if we got a little bit higher. [steps up a step ladder] Do you think I am closer to God now? Well, what if I went a little higher? Am I closer to God now? No, because God is already here, isn’t he. We can’t do anything to get closer to make ourselves closer to God because he is already here.

We can’t make ourselves closer to God, but sometimes we think we can do things to make God love us. Sometimes we think that if we obey all God’s commands, that God will love us more. It is sort of like stepping up on a ladder trying to get closer to God. [Steps up] And then we think if we go to church every Sunday and pray every day, God will love us more [steps up]. We sometimes think that we have to make God love us.

But the Apostle Paul said, “God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). In fact God loved us before we could even do anything. He loved us when we were just little babies. We can’t do anything to make God love us because he loves us already. [End Children’s Sermon]

One day Eleanor Shellstrop wakes up in a waiting room. She is sitting on a couch facing a wall with the message “Welcome! Everything is fine.” She is invited into an office by a gentleman named Michael who sits her down and proceeds to tell her that she has died but that she is in the “Good Place.” Eleanor, however, realizes immediately that she is not supposed to be in the paradise that is the Good Place. While everyone else talks of all the amazingly good things they did on earth, like teach moral philosophy, or open an orphanage in Haiti, she was and remains a completely self-absorbed person. She only acts in her own interest and she refuses to take responsibility or to be responsible for anything.

The show, “The Good Place,” depicts the Good Place as if it were a paradise produced by a computer program designed by Michael, who is called the Architect. The plot revolves around the fact that after Eleanor show up, things start malfunctioning and the Good Place begins to fall apart. Eleanor soon realizes that she is the virus that is causing the whole system to crash. She tries to find a way to fix things without having to reveal that she is not supposed to be there. When a solution presents itself but then falls through she says, “Darn! I was almost handed the perfect solution to all my problems without having to work for it at all, and now it’s gone. Why do bad things always happen to mediocre people?”[1]

It is assumed in the Good Place that we humans merit the judgements we receive. The people who are in the Good Place have all earned their place. Likewise, all the people in the “Bad Place” deserve to be there. No matter how often we preachers preach about the grace of God, this is probably our default mode of thinking. We also believe that God’s judgements reflect what we merit.

Our passage from Isaiah seems to uphold this way of thinking:

Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Because of your sins you were sold; because of your transgressions your mother was sent away. (Isaiah 50:12)

The Israelites have received what they deserve. They sinned and so were sent away into exile. They turned away from God, so God turned away from them.

I have been making the case over the past several weeks that our God, the God, is a humble God. I have noted how humility is an essential aspect of the Trinity which exists- Father, Son and Holy Spirit - as a community of love and mutual submission. Two weeks ago we saw how God uses his power in a humble way, not over against others, but for and with them. But when it comes to the judgements of God, when Israel is sent into exile, when God punishes people, is he not using his power over against them? How can I argue that God is a humble God when God seems to be so capricious in his judgment of Israel and of the nations?

Part of the problem is that when we assume that we should merit what we receive, that we should earn our rewards and our punishments, then God can seem to be a capricious, unmerciful, and arrogant judge. We have the same attitude as Eleanor and ask, “Why do bad things happen to mediocre people?” We think that we can’t possibly be bad enough to deserve God’s judgment. We assume that we are at least mediocre, that we at least have been good enough to deserve entry into “The Good Place,” and to receive God’s blessings. So if bad things happen to us, we tend to feel as though we are under God’s judgment, but then we go back on the first premise; we cannot believe that we are judged according to our merit. God must be capricious and arrogant. We conclude that God is a judgmental God, a God who acts over against us, not for and with us. God appears arrogant rather than humble.

We see a different picture of God, however, if we look more closely at our lesson from Isaiah. The first mistake people often make when looking at God’s judgments in the Bible is that they tend to look at God’s judgments in isolation. They forget the larger story. Isaiah, however, reminds us of the larger story right from the beginning. “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away?” he asks. The larger story is that God’s judgement doesn’t come out of the blue but in the context of a relationship with Israel. Israel was God’s chosen people, his bride, with whom he made a covenant of love. God’s relationship with Israel begins not with not God being over against them, but with God acting for and with them. God’s judgement of Israel, first of all, takes place in the context of God’s love for Israel.

This should remind us of why God made his covenant with Israel. In the first place, God entered into this special relationship with Israel not because Israel was the greatest nation, or the most righteous nation, or even for the sake of Israel. God chose Israel for the sake of all the nations, so that through Israel God could bring all the nations to him and bless them. All of God’s actions with Israel, both his saving actions and his judgements, are actions that are for and with humanity. God came to dwell in the temple of Israel in order to be with all of humanity. God’s judgements upon Israel therefore come after his being for and with Israel in order to be for and with humanity. So, second, the purpose of God’s judgements over Israel is so that the nations might learn from Israel’s mistakes.

Third, we should note that Isaiah points out that God has sent Israel into exile not only for her sins, not only because she merits punishment through disobedience, but also because she has failed to trust in God. In verse 2 God says, “When I came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Was my arm too short to deliver you? Do I lack the strength to rescue you?” God came to Israel, God called to Israel to be with and for her, to rescue her and deliver her. But they did not receive God. They did not trust God. They did not answer.

This leads us to the forth thing we must note about God’s judgments: they are natural consequences of our actions and our failure to trust. Verse 11 serves as a summary or conclusion to verses 1-3, “But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires.” If we trust in ourselves rather than God, we will walk by the light of our own fires. This will lead us away from God and into paths of disobedience. And moving away from God, being away from God, is the essence of God’s judgement against someone. We can’t make ourselves closer to God, or for God love us, but we can ignore his presence and turn away from him and his ways. And so God punishes Israel by sending her into exile. Such judgment is indeed merited by one’s failure to trust in God and by one’s disobedience. If we choose to walk away from God, God may allow us to do so.

But, fifth, such judgment comes only after God’s many attempts to bring us back to him. The nation of Israel, that is the northern 10 tribes, was sent into exile only after hundreds and hundreds of years of idolatry, injustice and of trusting in the power of other nations rather than God. The nation of Judah, the southern 2 tribes, was also sent into exile after seeing what happened to Israel just a few generations later for the same things. Moreover, God’s judgments upon Israel and Judah only come after years and years of God’s patience and long-suffering. Both are sent into exile after dozens of prophets came to them to call them back to God. “When I came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no answer?”

God’s judgments are not the judgements of a capricious, arrogant, power-hungry god. They are the natural results of our failure to trust in and obey God, and they come in the context of and after many attempts by God for him to be with us and for us. But we prefer to think that we are good enough on our own. We continue to think that mediocre gets us a passing grade. We blind ourselves to the depths of our rebellion and we refuse to see that any path that depends upon us rather than upon God leads us away from God.

But even in the midst of God’s judgment, God seeks to meet us with his grace. Chapter 50 of Isaiah is divided into three parts. The first part, verses 1-3, deals with Judah’s disobedience as we have seen. The second part, verse 5-9, turns to this figure called the Suffering Servant who keeps making appearances in the second half of Isaiah. The third part, verses 10 and 11, provide summaries or a conclusion to each section, verse 10 summarizes 4-9, and 11 summarizes 1-3.

Now Christians immediately assume that the Suffering Servant is Jesus. It is true that Jesus lays claim to this figure, but before we turn to Jesus, we ought to see how and who the Suffering Servant is in the context of Isaiah. In chapter 42 the Servant is introduced and he seems to be an individual: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold … I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.” But in chapter 49 the Servant seems to be the nation of Israel, “He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.’” Isaiah thus speaks of Israel, or maybe a part of Israel, maybe a faithful remnant of Israel, as a single person, just as the prophets often personify unfaithful Israel as an unfaithful wife.

In our text we see the continued faithfulness of this Servant. The Servant seems to be a faithful remnant of Israel through whom God continues to be with his people even in the midst of judgment. I would give the Hebrew Bible, which was largely put together and edited during Israel’s exile as evidence of such a faithful remnant. This results in three more ways in which God’s judgments prove to be the acts not of an arrogant and capricious God, but of a loving, merciful, and humble God. First, in contrast to unfaithful Israel, the Servant is given “a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.” The Servant listens to God. He is teachable. He is obedient, and so through the Servant God’s words of comfort can come to God’s people.

Second, unlike unfaithful Israel, the Servant continues to trust in God. He says in verse 7, “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near.” In the midst of Israel’s exile, the Suffering Servant offers an example of one who continues to trust in God. And so the Suffering Servant offers true hope. In verse 10, the summary, we read, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God.” Through the Servant Israel learns that they can trust God even in the midst of God’s judgment, even as they live in exile.

Third, the Servant endures the judgment of God for the sake of others. The Servant lives in solidarity with unfaithful Israel and so endures the abuse that is meted out by Israel’s pagan captors, the Babylonians. “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard.” The vicarious nature of this suffering comes to the fore in chapter 53:4, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” The Servant endures the punishment Israel deserves for the sake of Israel, but in this way also fulfills the calling of Israel. “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant,” God says in 49:6, “to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

In each of these three ways, God continues to act through the Servant in order to act with and for his people and thus all humanity even in the midst of the judgment of Israel’s exile. Through the Servant God speaks words of comfort and encourages his people to return to obedience and to trust. Through the Servant God leads Israel back to her true vocation. God chooses the Servant to bring his salvation not only to Israel but to all the nations. God works through the Servant to demonstrate that there is yet salvation for his people and for all humanity. Judgment is not the end of the story.

In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus thus lays claim to the role of the Suffering Servant. Peter confesses him to be the Christ, by which he means that Jesus is the King of Israel who has returned to bring God’s salvation to Israel and God’s judgment upon the Romans. But Jesus responds by saying that God will not work over against the Romans through him. Rather, he says he must go up to Jerusalem to be betrayed by the religious leaders into the hands of the Romans, that he will be killed, but that he will rise again after the third day. Jesus takes on the role of the Suffering Servant who takes upon himself God’s judgment of Rome, of all the nations, and of unfaithful Israel. But Jesus remains obedient to God and trusting in God even through death so that he might bring Israel and all the nations to God’s salvation.

What is your favorite part church? One of my favorite parts of church is after the service when we get to eat snacks. Do you like that part of church? Well one of my favorite snacks is chocolate brownies. Do you know how to make brownies? Well, all you do it add ¼ cup of water, a ½ cup of oil and an egg to some brownie mix and then bake it at 325 for 45 minutes.

So I just told you how to make brownies. Do you think you could go home and do that? No? Maybe? With some help? Well what if we were to make brownies together right now? … So Miss Roxann is going to put that in the oven in the kitchen and she has my permission to get up during the service, even if it is during my sermon, to check and see if they are done, and then we will have some nice warm brownies after the service.

We have been talking the last few weeks about how God made us to be like him. Jesus came to save us from our sins so that we really could be like God. But God doesn’t just tell us how to be like him, he wants us to become like him by acting like him, by doing things. It is sort of like making brownies. If someone just tells you how to do it, you have an idea of how to do it. But it isn’t until you actually try to make brownies that you actually learn to do it. The Apostle James, he was Jesus’ brother, wrote, “Do not merely listen to the word [of God]. … Do what it says.”

[End of children’s sermon]

Every parent wants for their child to be like them, at least in some ways. I often make blueberry pancakes on Saturday mornings, and when I do, it reminds me of my dad. He made blueberry pancakes every Saturday morning. When my son Evan was young, maybe 6 or 7, he would help me make the pizza dough for the pizza we have every Sunday night. I was tickled that he wanted to help me. For me it seemed like his wanting to help me make the pizza dough was his way of showing that he wanted to be like me. I had hopes that by 8 years old he would be able to mix and knead the dough and then roll it out all by himself. Unfortunately, Evan soon lost interest and I went back to making the pizza dough on my own.

Making pancakes and pizza dough are rather trivial things. What parents really desire is that their children become like them in what they value, in their morals and in who and what they worship. That is what really matters to us, and that is what really matters to God, our heavenly Father.

In our gospel lesson this morning Jesus gets into an argument with the Pharisees over how it is that God wants his children, the Israelites, to be like him. The Pharisees sort of took Leviticus 11:45 as their motto for life: “I am the Lord who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.”

To be holy means to be set apart and marked off as special. Leviticus has rule after rule about how the Israelites and especially priests and those who served in the temple were supposed to keep themselves clean and ritually pure. These laws specify which animals are clean and can be eaten, and which are unclean. They speak about how various things like touching dead person or bleeding or various skin diseases can make a person unclean. These cleanliness laws and “holiness codes,” as they are called, reminded the people that God was holy, set apart, and that they, the Israelites had been called and set apart from all the other nations by God. They were his chosen people.

The Pharisees took all this to heart. They believed that all Israelites should strictly follow not only the cleanliness laws that were meant for all the Israelites, but also the more strict laws that were meant for the priests and Levites. One could say that the Pharisees came up with the idea of the priesthood of all believers. But just to be sure that they were truly holy and set apart, they added an oral tradition, the traditions of the elders, which they accuse Jesus’ disciples of not following.

Now Jesus’ response is interesting. He doesn’t just say, “Your traditions are not actually commanded by God in the scriptures. They are not biblical, so no one has to follow them if they don’t want to.” No. Instead he uses this as an opportunity to teach about the true nature of holiness.

One of the problems that has plagued Christianity and Judaism over the centuries is a distorted understanding of holiness. The Pharisees centered their theology and their practice around the fact that Israel was God’s chosen people. They sought to live up to God’s grace and mercy and love for his people by following God’s laws as best they could and by encouraging their fellow Israelites to do the same. The problem, however, was that they saw that the goal of the law was to set them apart from the Gentiles, from the “unclean,” and from “sinners” and the unrighteous. Their focus, then, was not on becoming like God in how God acted, but in how God was set apart.

The first problem with this is that it is not the law or following the law that makes someone holy. It is God who sets us apart and makes us holy. God gives us the law so that we can then learn to live in God’s ways. The law reminds us of our holiness and leads us into righteous, just and moral living. By following the law in order to make themselves holy or to maintain their separateness, the Pharisees forgot about the real importance of morality, that morality is key to what it means to be holy.

This leads to the second problem. In verses 9 through 13 Jesus points out how the Pharisees concern for holiness and maintaining purity has blinded them to justice and compassion. He rebukes them because according to their code if someone dedicates some money, or maybe the produce from a certain field to the temple, then that can never be taken back. Even if that persons’ parents become sick or destitute, they cannot use that money to help their parents. “Thus,” says Jesus in verse 13, “You nullify the word of God by your tradition.”

This has plagued Christianity over the centuries as well. When Christians have put too much emphasis on being “chosen” by God and upon holiness, upon remaining separate from the “world,” it has inevitably led to injustice. When we emphasize our own holiness and chosenness, we lose our capacity for compassion. Instead of loving our neighbor and the stranger, we vilify them. When Christians have emphasized our holiness and chosenness, it has led to ideologies that set Christians over against people of other religions and it has set some Christian nations even over against other Christian nations. It has become the basis of nationalism, racist ideologies and White Supremacism. When we view ourselves mainly as set apart and chosen, then others become the enemy and we begin to justify the use of force over against them in the name of maintaining our own purity and advancing “God’s cause.”

God, however, did not set Israel apart and make her holy so that she might be over against the other nations. In our lesson from Deuteronomy God says, “Observe [my commandments] carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (4:6). Wisdom and understanding, if you recall, demonstrate the fear of the Lord. They demonstrate that a people lives in God’s ways and thus they reveal the nature and character of God. God chose Israel and set her apart so that God might bless the nations through Israel, so that the other nations might come to know who God was and what his ways are by observing Israel.

The apostle James says the same about the Christian church. In verse 18 he says, “[God] chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” The firstfruits were the first crops harvested each year. They were often sacrificed to God as a thank offering because they symbolized that God had been faithful for another year and they were a guarantee that more was to come. Christians are the firstfruits because by redeeming us, God demonstrates that he has been faithful not just to us, but to all humanity. We are thus set apart as a promise that there is more salvation to come, that God’s salvation is for all humanity.

Jesus enters into this argument with the Pharisees because they view holiness as a way in which God’s people are set apart from the nations, which they think of as over against the nations. But Jesus demonstrates in the following stories that he is not only Israel’s Messiah, but the savior of the nations, the savior of the Gentiles. In the next story he casts out a demon from the daughter of a pagan Gentile. He then heals a deaf and mute Gentile in the Gentile region of the Decapolis. He then feeds a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentiles of over 4,000 people in the wilderness. Mark highlights the fact that both the feeding of the 5,000 in chapter 6 and the 4,000 in chapter 8 happen in “desert” places, and thus allude to God giving manna to the Israelites in the wilderness. The point is that God acts to feed both Jew and Gentile. Throughout these chapters Jesus acts as the true Israelite through whom God works to bless both Jew and Gentile. The implication is that to be a disciple of Jesus is to become a vessel of God through whom God acts with and for all of humanity.

This, then, brings us back to Jesus’ first critique of the Pharisees’ understanding of holiness. To be holy is to be morally set apart. James says in verse 27 that true religion is “to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” The Pharisees think this means they must be separate from a certain kind of people, but James equates being separate from the world with looking after “orphans and widows in their distress.” It means to seek justice and love mercy. Jesus also teaches in verse 15 that to be holy means that to be separate from immoral activity. “What comes out of a person is what defiles them … sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” Holiness is therefore about being moral. True religion and holiness is following God’s ways so that others see how good and just and loving and merciful God is. True religion is acting like God in justice and compassion with and for others rather over and against them.

Last week I argued that God is a humble God because he acts not against other but for others and with others. The notion of being God’s chosen, of being the firstfruits, presents us with a fourth type of power: God acts through others. God demonstrates his humility by first investing all humanity with authority and responsibility by making us in his image. He then invests Israel with the responsibility of being a priestly nation through whom he might bless the nations. He then invests the church with the responsibility of being the firstfruits. We are thus called to be set apart from the world in that we act with the same love and compassion that God has towards the world. James calls us not only to listen to the word of God, but to do it. And that means to look after orphans and widows, to seek justice for the poor and the oppressed, to welcome the stranger, and to proclaim in word and deed that Jesus is lord and savior of all people. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Silence

O God, author and giver of all good things, plant in our hearts the love of your name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] This morning I would like to do a little experiment with you. So when I am standing here, you can see me, right? And you can hear me, right? Would you say I am with you? How about if I move here? Can you hear me? Am I with you? But what if I move [goes behind a wall]… here. Can you see me? Can you hear me? Yes. Am I with you?

When someone is with us we can usually see them and here them, can’t we? But someone can be with you, at least in some way, even when you can’t see them. Because you could hear my words, I was still with you in a way. Have you ever talked to anyone on the phone? Maybe a grandparent, or an aunt or an uncle? Maybe they were far away, but by talking with them on the phone they were sort of with you for a while weren’t they.

In the gospel of John Jesus teaches that if we believe in him and if we trust in him, he will remain in us and we will remain in him. That means he will be with us always. But we can’t see Jesus, can we? And we can’t even hear Jesus by talking to him over the phone. But there are other ways Jesus remains with us. He gave us his word, the Bible, that we can read. So when we read the Bible we can hear Jesus. We can pray to Jesus and when we pray we can speak to him and we can listen to him in silence as well. And Jesus also promised to send his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to us. So if we believe and trust in Jesus I want you to remember that Jesus remains with us by his Word, through prayer and by his Holy Spirit. [end children’s sermon]

* * * * * * * * * *

Two weeks ago I talked about how we were created to be like God. In Christ, therefore, we are being remade in his image to become more and more like God. Last week I argued that our first step towards becoming like God, however, was to recognize that we are not God. We were made to be like God in some ways, but we were not made to be God. To be like God, we, his creatures must submit ourselves to him, honor him, obey him, and worship him. We must fear him.

Our first step to becoming more like God is a step of humility. Many of you know that during my sabbatical I read and wrote about humility. And so, even if you didn’t realize it, this is now my third sermon in series about humility. Last week we examined an important aspect of humility. Humility involves a submission to something or someone. It often involves a submission to someone greater than oneself. A student demonstrates humility by following the instructions of her teacher. Humility can also come in the form of a submission to an ideal or a cause. The President of the United States should act out of humility after swearing to uphold and protect the constitution of the United States of American. The President thus places himself, or one day herself, under the ideals and the regulations of the constitution. We demonstrate humility through our fear of God. We submit ourselves to the person of God and to the ways of God.

Now it is fitting for our first step in becoming more like God to be a step of humility because our God is a humble God. That may sound kind of odd because there are many acclamations in scripture that praise God for his majesty, his might, his great wisdom, his glory. Psalm 8, for example, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. … When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, … What is humankind that you are mindful of them?” Our temptation is that we want to emulate God and become like God in his power and glory. We want that for ourselves. But what if this glorious and mighty God were also a humble God? What if this God also demonstrated a kind of submissiveness?

In our gospel text this morning in verse 55. Jesus says, “my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” A little later in verse 63 he says, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.” Later in the book Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and even later he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (11:25; 14:6).

So who is the life? Jesus says he lives because of the Father, but that the Spirit gives life, and that he himself is the life. How can this be? How can Jesus be the source of life, yet live because of the Father? What lies behind Jesus’ words is what we call the Trinity. Jesus is the life because as he himself says, he abides in the Father and he and the Father are one. The Spirit gives life because the Spirit is the sent by the Father just as the Father sends the Son. Paul talks about the Spirit in various ways, sometimes within the same sentence. He can call the Spirit the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, or just the Spirit. In some ways Father, Son (or Jesus or Christ), and Spirit are interchangeable. They are all God. They are all in some ways One. But yet the very fact that Jesus refers to the Father and the Spirit means that they are in some ways unique. If there were no difference the Father couldn’t send the Son, nor the Son send the Spirit.

From all this we can say that the source of all being is not just one, but one in three, or three in one. The community of the Trinity is at the source of all being. Mutual give and take is at the source of all being. God is a humble God because in the life of the Trinity there is mutual submission. In our text we see that Jesus is submissive to the Father for he is sent by the Father. But there are other places in scripture where we see even the Father subordinating himself to the Son. Throughout the New Testament Jesus is known as “Lord.” “Jesus is Lord,” was the first Christian confession of faith. In Roman ears this meant that Jesus was Lord and not Caesar, but in Jewish ears it mean something different. Jews never say the name of God, Yahweh, but instead call God, Adonai, which means Lord. When Christians call Jesus Lord, they are calling him Yahweh. Commenting on one of these passages biblical scholar Reinhard Feldmeier says that God hands over the name he has held throughout Israel’s history and takes the name Father for himself.[1]

In Philippians 2:6 (pg. 873) we see perhaps the greatest example of this mutual give and take and mutual submission. Jesus although “in nature God” “made himself nothing,” was “made in human likeness,” and remained “obedient even unto death.” “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.” Jesus submitted himself in obedience to the Father, so the Father gives him his own place and his own name so that “every tongue” may “acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord,” or Yahweh, or God. But Jesus does this “to the glory of the Father.” He gives back the glory he receives. There is mutual submission, mutual give and take, mutual sharing between the Father and the Son

In our passage Jesus is saying that he is the bread of life, the bread that comes down from heaven because he participates in and is part of the source of life that is Father. But earlier in the passage in verse 40 Jesus says, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.” Jesus looks to the Father as the source of life. The Father points us to Jesus as the source of life.

Jesus takes up this image of the manna given to the Israelites in the wilderness because of the symbolic meaning of the manna. Yes, food is our source of life in a physical sense. But the Israelites learned by eating the bread from heaven, the manna which was sent by God every day, to trust in God. The source of true life is trust in God. Here Jesus is saying that the true bread from heaven, the true source of life, real food, is trusting in him for he and the Father are one.

But there is more, to eat the bread of heaven, to trust in Jesus is to be invited into a relationship that is like the relationships in the Trinity. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them,” says Jesus. We live as we exist in this loving and humble relationship with Jesus, just as Jesus lives in a loving and humble relationship within the Trinity. Now of course in this relationship we submit ourselves to Jesus, but Jesus, in a sense, also serves us. He is the one who already submitted himself to death for us, but he continues to serve us as our intercessor before the Father and by promising to abide in us if we abide in him.

And this brings us to a second aspect of humility: how one uses power. Feldmeier argues that there are two kinds of power. “There is the power of the devil, which violently subjects the other person to one’s own will, and there is the power of the rule of God, which understands existence as coexistence and hence acts not against the other but for him and with him.”[2]

I might separate this into three kinds of power – power against, power for, and power with. And so we see Jesus using power for us and with us in this passage. In verse 51 Jesus says “This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” Jesus goes to the cross, but also rises from the dead for the life of the world. He uses his power to defeat death for us. But Jesus didn’t do this just for us. He did this so that he could be with us, and he did this first by taking on our flesh and blood.

If we want to know and experience what it is to abide in Jesus, I think we need to move from an understanding of how God uses power for us to and an understanding that God also uses power with us. Some may think that God mainly uses power against us. Many view God as a mainly judgmental. Our job is to not mess up, to not sin, and to obey all kinds of rules to keep God from getting angry with us. I hope that we all recognize that God’s main stance toward us is one of love and grace and mercy. He is a God who is for us.

And so maybe our prayers are not so much about God’s power against us, but God’s power for us. We turn to God in prayer mainly in terms of intercession. We ask God for his blessings not only for our benefit, but also for the benefit of others. In turn, if we ask God to do things for us, we feel we have to pledge ourselves to do things for God. We pledge ourselves to obey him. We seek to do his will. We dedicate ourselves to using our gifts and talents in service to God’s kingdom.

That is all well and good, but Jesus says that if we eat the bread of life we will be in him and he in us. How then do we move from knowing that God is for us, to embracing God with us? In my children’s sermon I mentioned God’s word and prayer. Let’s start with prayer.

At the beginning of our service I have been asking you to review your day or your week to notice the places God has blessed you or others and then to give thanks. But the more we notice and give thanks for what God has done for us and others, the more we will notice that God is not just doing things for us, he is present with us. Move then from noticing what God has done to noting how God has been present. Then the more we take note of his presence with us, the more we will begin to realize that he not only wants us to do things for him and for the Kingdom, but with him. Jesus is in us not just to comfort us and make us feel good, but so that we can fully participate in the life of God and in the mission of God. God and Jesus are not satisfied with us doing things for them, they want us to do things and live with them. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

But that is not an easy calling. It means that we must, as Jesus says, “eat his flesh and drink his blood.” It means we must give up trying to be our own source of life, our own source of power, our own source of morality. It means we must put our trust solely and fully in him. It means we must fear him. And so we say with many of his disciples in verse 60, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Abiding in Jesus means constantly confronting that part of us that finds this difficult and wants to walk away. We all want and desire to be independent. We all want and desire to determine our lives and our destinies for ourselves. And so in our worship service almost every week, we take time to examine our lives and to admit that there are times and places where we have exerted our own will over against the will of God. We must ask: where have we used our power not for or with others, but violently, through hurtful words or actions, over against others? Where have we acted selfishly? Where have we sought to keep a corner of our lives independent from God? Has it been in how we spend or save our money? Has it been in how we have sought or used power in our relationships with our colleagues? Has it been in how you have treated a friend, or your children, or your parents?

Through our prayer of confession, by confessing our sins and seeking God’s mercy, we come to recognize and confess what Jesus says in verse 63, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.” The flesh is that part of us and the world that is opposed to the Kingdom of God and God’s ways. It is that independent streak in us. But when we confess this we confess that Jesus, the Spirit, the Father, that the Triune God, is the only true source of life and that life comes only through the grace of God. “This is why I told you,” Jesus says in verse 65, “that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.” Through our confession of sin, we throw ourselves completely on the mercy and grace of God and so we eat the flesh of Jesus for we trust in him for forgiveness and true life.

It is then, however, that we can live our lives not just for God and his kingdom, but with God. In verse 66 we read, “From this time many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and no longer followed him. ‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We began this service with a silent prayer of gratitude so that we could become more aware of how God is present with us. We then had a silent prayer of confession so that we could admit our utter need for God’s grace. We then turned to God’s word. Let us now take a few moments of silent prayer and ask, “What has Jesus said to me this morning?” He may have said something in the texts of scripture. It may have been in the sermon. It may have been in the prayers, or the songs we sang or the blessing we have received. How has Jesus been with you through his word this morning?

[Children’s sermon] You all know I have been away for a while. Well, while I was on sabbatical I didn’t’ preach once. I didn’t give one children’s sermon for four months, which means I am a little out of practice. So I was wondering if someone else might do the children’s sermon for me this morning. Actually I thought it would be a good idea to kind of reverse things and have the children give the children’s sermon. See? Then it could be a children’s sermon! How about that? Would you all like to give the children’s sermon? No? Why not? How about one of the older children? Or a teenager? Why not? …

Well, aside from the fact that no one else is prepared, I am the pastor and I am the one at least at Hessel Park Church who is expected to give the children’s sermon. I am the pastor and you are not. And I need to know that and b prepared to give a children’s sermon on Sunday. But this morning I am still going to get some help from some children. I have here a poster that Isaak and Mariclare made for Sunday School. It says “God is …” and then all these symbols and words of what God is: Alpha and Omega, or we might say he is the A to Z, he is the Beginning and the End. He is light, and the King, The way, the truth and the life. The Creator. He is Eternal and immortal. He is wise and all knowing. He is all these things.

Now last week we talked about how we were made to be like God. But can we be like all these things? No. We can be loving, but not Love itself. We can be wise, but not all knowing. We have eternal life in Jesus, but there was a time when we were not, so we are not Eternal. And we are certainly not the creator. So there are many ways we can be like God, but then there are also many ways in which we cannot.

You see, while we were created to be like God, the first thing we really need to know is that God is God, and we are not God. The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (9:10). Now we think of fear only in the sense of being afraid of something, but in the Bible, fear can also mean to have respect for something, and even to worship something. So the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of becoming like God is not to be afraid of God, but to respect, honor and worship God. And we know this because we don’t need to be afraid of God for he is Love. He is the Creator. He is Compassionate, forgiving and just. He is our shepherd. To fear God is to know that God is God and we are not. [End of children’s sermon]

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Many of you know that my parents are what some people call “avid birders.” They are serious birdwatchers. Their goal has been to see 5,000 different species of birds. They have travelled all over the world, from Central and South America, to China, Indonesia, India, and Australia, from Madagascar and South Africa, to Alaska and Newfoundland. They are currently in Brazil floating down the Amazon River. And just the other day they surpassed their goal of 5,000 species.

They chose 5,000 because it was about half of the 10,000 or so known species of birds in the world. It is also a very respectable number to see even among serious birdwatchers. They had to work pretty hard for many years to see this many species. But while I was looking up these facts the other night, I found an article that said that scientists are now rethinking how they divide up species. Under the old way they estimate that there are around 10,000 species of birds in the world. Under the new way, they estimate that there could be over 18,000 and maybe even 20,000 species.

While this may come as really disappointing news to my parents, it probably means that they have actually seen a couple thousands more species than they thought. To me it demonstrates something fascinating about the world we live in. While humans may be amassing more and more information and knowledge about the world, the more we learn about the world, the more we learn that there is even yet more to learn. As scientists learn more about birds, they are learning that the old ways they categorized them didn’t fit with how different populations of birds have evolved and thus formed different species. And I am sure that this is true of every field that is represented in this room, or else you all would be out of a job. The more we learn, the more we find out that there is more to learn.

For some, our growing knowledge of the universe becomes a source of pride and hubris. We tend to put our faith in progress and development and “advancement.” We think we will be able to command more and more of the universe as we come to know more and more about it. We therefore think we will be able to solve all our problems through our knowledge of the world. But the truth is that the more we learn, the more we realize that there so much we do not know. This is a cause not for hubris, but for humility. The more we learn about the universe, the more we ought to be awed by its vast complexity and diversity, but probably also, in some ways, its simplicity. All life that we know of, for example, is carbon based. This, to me, is awe inspiring and thus humbling.

In our text this morning we read that ““The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” For far too long the church has misinterpreted the meaning of fear throughout the Bible. We have taught people that our first and foremost position before God must be one of fear. We must be afraid of God and fear his punishment. And because of this many people have left the church or thought that Christians believe in a sadistic God.

In looking up the etymology of the English word fear, I found that fear is almost always associated with a purely negative feelings of terror. There are some hints that the English word occasionally means to have a sense of awe and respect, but for the most part we associate fear only with potential harm.

But as Christians we should understand “fear” in terms of how the biblical authors used the word. How did they define or re-define fear? So if we look at this verse we just quoted, we can see that it follows a typical poetic form of Hebrew poetry called parallelism. In this you have two lines that go together and play upon each other. The meaning of each line is shaped by the other. Sometimes the second line repeats the first but this expands and interprets the meaning, and sometimes it says the opposite, which is also expands and interprets the meaning. So in our case the second line repeats and expands the meaning of the first. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” It is obvious that wisdom and understanding are synonyms. They are in parallel in the two lines of the verses. But so are “the fear of the Lord” and “knowledge of the Holy One.” The point of this poetic structure is to encourage us to associate “the fear of the Lord” with “knowledge of the Holy One.” They somehow fit together. Fear is thus not just about being afraid of God. It is about coming to know more about God.

If we turn to our Psalm we see that the fear of the Lord has little to do with being afraid. “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:8-14)

Those who fear the Lord are those who are secure in God’s care and have no need of fear. God provides for them. They have tasted and seen that God is good and so they seek to follow God. They turn from evil and do good. They seek peace and pursue it. The fear of the Lord not only has to do not only with getting to know more about God, that he is good, but also getting to know how to be like God.

If we turn to Psalm 25 we can see another example of the “fear of God” being used in the same way. “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God.” V. 4: “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” The Psalmist is not afraid of God but has great trust and hope in God and so desires knowledge of God so he can be like God.

And what does he know of God? V. 8: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.” The Psalmist knows he is a sinner, but he is not afraid for he knows God instructs sinners in his ways. He knows that God is good and upright and loving.

So what about the fear of the Lord? V. 12: “Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.” Here again we see a connection between the fear of the Lord and gaining knowledge of God and his ways. V. 13: “[The one who fears the Lord] will spend his days in prosperity and his descendants will inherit the land. The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.”

We see throughout this psalm a connection between fearing God, having knowledge of God, learning and following his ways, and then the person prospering, or being redeemed from trouble, or forgiven, and so on. Verse 14 sort of sums all this up: “The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.” The language in verse 13 about land and prosperity is covenantal language. : “[The one who fears the Lord] will spend his days in prosperity and his descendants will inherit the land. God promised Israel the land in his covenant with Abraham. So to fear the Lord is to be welcomed into a covenantal relationship with God that is defined by love and care and grace on God’s part, and devotion and trust and worship on ours. The Psalmist begins the psalm with worship, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God.” To fear the Lord, according to the psalmist, is to trust in, revere, and worship God. To fear the Lord is not to be afraid, but to enter into a relationship of faith and faithfulness with God.

That being said, the Greek and Hebrew words for fear can also mean what we usually mean by fear – to be afraid of harm. One of the most common commands God gives to those he directly encounters or who he encounters through his angels is, “Do not be afraid.” In Genesis 15 God says to Abraham, “Do not be afraid. I am your shield, your very great reward.” In Daniel 10, Daniel sees a messenger of God, or maybe the Son of Man, and he is terrified. But the man says to him, “Do not be afraid.” When the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah and then to Mary in Luke 1, he says to them, “Do not be afraid.” When the resurrected Jesus meets his disciples in Matthew 28, he says, “Do not be afraid.” In the book of Revelation when John sees the Son of Man sitting on his throne in all his glory, he falls down as if dead, but the Son of Man places his hand on John and says, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last” (1:17)

When we come face to face with God, we cannot help but be afraid. Fear in this instance is not necessarily fear that this being before us might personally cause us harm or attack us. It is the fear of harm because of the unknown. It is fear that arises from an encounter with something so other than us that we can hardly fathom the difference. Those who encounter God or Jesus or even just an angel of God encounter something so much greater and more powerful than they that they are awestruck and dumbfounded. This fear is the recognition that God is God, and we are not. It is a recognition that the difference in being between God and us is infinite. We can’t help but feel small, insignificant, unworthy and also sinful in the presence of the God who is truly and fully righteous and holy. But when we look at actual encounters with God in the scriptures, God immediately responds to this warranted fear with love and compassion. “Do not be afraid,” he says, inviting us into a covenantal relationship of trust.

Thus we return to the connection between the knowledge of God and the fear of God. The more we come to know God, the more awestruck we will be. The more we come to know of his power and majesty, the more we will respect him. The more we come to know of his justice and his compassion, the more we will honor him and want to follow in his ways. The more we know of his mercy and love, the more we will worship him. The more we fear him, the more we live in awe of him, the more we will trust in him.

So let us close with a little exercise to help us think about God and that God is God and we are not. I look around the room and I see people who are extremely knowledgeable in one field or another – Physics, Mathematics, Ethics, and so on. I see others who have amazing talents and skills – Pianists, Physical therapists, computer experts, a lawyer. Each of you has talents or abilities or knowledge that the person sitting next to you knows little or nothing about. Now think of some colleague you have and about all the things they know about your filed that you don’t know. The point is that whatever we do as humans, whatever we know, we can only master a certain number of things. Even within our field of expertise, we are all limited in our knowledge and skill. We are so finite.

Now think back to the children’s sermon. Just one thing on that poster about God was that he was the creator. Think of all that entails. It entails not only that God knows all the stuff that each of knows, but all the stuff that we realize we don’t know about our field or our practice, and all the stuff that we don’t even know that we don’t know yet. It also means not only that he knows it, but that he designed it. He made it. All. And that is only one aspect of God. We can’t even begin to scratch the surface of the knowledge of God.

The God we worship, my friends, is a God to be in awe of. He is a God to fear. But if we fear him, this God welcomes us into a relationship of love and trust with him so that we can become more and more like him. He invites us into a relationship with him so that we can come to live more in line with the way his is and the way he made the world. And that, my friends, is the definition of wisdom. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Silence]

Almighty God, teach us to fear you, so that we may worship you. Teach us to worship you, so that we may come to know you more and more. Teach us to know you, so that we may be like you. Shape us more and more in your image so that we may be wise, live in your ways, and be salt and light in this world. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] So I wonder how many of you can play the piano? Adults and teens too, how many of you can play the piano? Even I can play the piano, maybe just the melody line, but that is at least something. But how many of you can play this [holds up a sheet of music]? That looks pretty difficult, doesn’t it? I know I couldn’t play that but I know several of you are much better at playing the piano than me. But maybe you are not accomplished enough to play this. But even if you can’t play all of this, maybe you can play this … [pianist plays the melody]. Or maybe even this … [adds harmony or bass?]. So even if you can’t play this [indicates sheet music and pianist plays the full score], you could still play a version of this piece of music.

This morning in our epistle reading Paul urges the church in Ephesus, which we call Ephesians, he says, “Be imitators of God.” “Be imitators of God … as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (5:1-2). That seems like a hard thing for us to do? Who of us can really imitate God? Can you be as strong and powerful as God? Can you be as loving as Jesus? Could you sacrifice your life like Jesus did on the cross for us? Paul says earlier in his letter that we are being made new in Christ in order “to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:24). Who of us can be perfect and live a life of true righteousness and holiness? Who of us is without sin like Jesus?

Well, maybe you can think of it as being a bit like playing the piano. Living without sin, in true righteousness and holiness, fully imitating God is something like this … [pianist plays full score]. We may not be able to do that or do that perfectly. But maybe we have begun to learn to live like Jesus. Maybe we have begun to be like God. Paul urges the Ephesians not to be angry with each other or fight with each other, but to forgive each other. He tells them not to steal or to lie. Rather he says to be show compassion to each other and to love one another. Now we all know how to be kind and loving, so we can make a start. We can be like this … [pianist plays the melody]. And with the help of the Holy Spirit and by working together as a church, we can all make progress and begin to be more like this … [add harmony / bass]. Paul says if we live together as a church, filled with the Holy Spirit, we will grow and build each other up in love until we become more and more like this [pianist plays full score]. [end children’s sermon]

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Have you ever seen a commercial on TV like this? You see a couple sitting at a table in a romantic restaurant. “Imagine a moment of magic.”[1] The woman opens up a small box and something inside sparkles. “Imagine a moment of pride.” The woman nonchalantly holds her hand so her ring just somehow can’t be missed. Her friends whisper in the background, “How can she afford a ring like that?” “Well stop imagining. Enjoy the magic and the pride when you wear the fabulous 5 karat cubic zirconium Princessa Evening Ring. It can be yours for only $9.95. But wait, that’s not all …” How many of you have seen a commercial like this and actually wanted a genuine, cubic zirconium ring?

Cubic zirconia is a synthetic material that is colorless and very durable that is used as an imitation diamond. But to those who care, no matter how beautiful, and brilliant cubic zirconia is, it is just not a diamond. It is a fake, an imposter, an imitation. Philosopher Charles Taylor argues that we live in the age of authenticity. Since we have broken down traditional societies in which children basically grew up into the same roles and jobs as their parents, we have to create our own identities. We have therefore come to prize authenticity. We all must find our true selves, or rather, develop, construct and create our true selves. And it just doesn’t seem to be right if the selves we create are mere imitations of someone else. No one wants to be called a fake or an imposter. The two moral maxims our society seems to be one, that we all must be true to ourselves, and two, we must therefore be tolerant of others.

As a society we value individuality and originality. But what we usually settle for is a cheap imitation that only purports to be an original. We can’t escape this. No one is able to be truly and fully original. We all operate out of a culture we inherit, with a language or languages that shape how we think. And if you look closely at anyone who is trying to be “original” by getting tattoos or piercings or through the clothes they wear, there are numerous other people being “original” in the same way. Perhaps to be truly original or unique we could embrace our dependence on others. The truth is that our identities are a mix of what we receive from others and our own individuality. The way to be truly unique is to become genuine imitations.

You see, we should not disparage imitation because we were made for imitation. God made humans “in the image of God.” Paul’s ethical advice centers on his encouragement for us to imitate God. The only way for us to be real humans is to be genuine imitations of God. Our problem, however, is that we attempt to be fake imitations. Adam and Eve were fake imitations of God. Although they were made in the image of God, although they were made to be like God, their sin was to seek their own way to be like God. By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they sought the power to determine what is right and what is wrong for themselves. They sought to be gods, and thus false imitations of God. A false imitation denies dependence on the original and seeks to replace the original and be seen as something completely different. A genuine imitation, however, honestly admits dependence upon the original and openly seeks to follow the original. We were made to be genuine imitations of God.

But as I mentioned in the children’s sermon, that almost seems like an impossible task. Who can live in true and untainted righteousness and holiness? Won’t all our efforts be tinged with our attempts to forge our own way? How do we avoid the temptation of Adam and Eve and slip from imitating God to trying to be gods ourselves?

Humility and pride determine the difference between genuine imitation and false imitation. In thinking, reading and writing about humility over the past few months, I came across numerous authors who make the claim that pride is the root of all evil. Pride moved Adam and Eve to seek to become gods. They lacked the humility to remain dependent on God and to be happy imitating God. It takes humility to depend upon another. It takes humility to submit oneself to following in the way of another. Pride seeks independence and its own way. Humility embraces dependence and obedience.

How then are we to become genuine imitations of God? How are we to “put on the new self,” as Paul says, “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:24). Well, I think an analogy with music can help us here. Living into our true selves is like learning how to play the piece of music God created for each of us to be. Yes, we all are unique. We are all individuals, but we share a common tradition. We follow common laws and conventions and so on. And in Christ we are all joined into one body through baptism. We all play, and live and work together in and through the church. Together we are an orchestra called to play a particular symphony.

At the beginning of the chapter Paul urges us to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (4:1-2). He then goes off on what seems to be a theological tangent, “There is one body and one Spirit, … one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Paul basically riffs on the Trinity, that God is three in one – one Spirit, one Lord (who is Jesus), one God and Father. At its best, the church displays the same unity, the same harmony, as we find in our triune God.

We will talk more about humility and the Trinity in the next weeks, but theology, how we understand and talk about God and about our relationship with him, is fundamentally important. Theology matters. Think of theology as sort of like the music staff, the treble clef and the bass clef. Theology sort of sets the structure for our life with God. Theology arises out of our shared discussions on the Bible and what we know of God from the creation and from our experience of the Holy Spirit. Theology sets the boundaries and provides a common language for our life together in pursuit of becoming genuine images of God. If our goal, our purpose, our reason for being created and recreated is to be like God, we need theology. We need to know what God is like.

So we have theology, the music staff, but we also have the actual notes. We can think of the notes as the various virtues we are to exhibit in our lives. When the actions and thoughts that we have align with the virtues, then we are living our lives in tune with God’s plan for us. Our actions are the notes we play. When we live according to the virtues, when we speak truthfully, share with those in need, live at peace with others, when we are kind and filled with compassion, then our lives sound in harmony. But when we follow the vices, when we let anger overtake us, when we are bitter, when we lie about or slander others, our lives sound disharmonious. Something just isn’t right. It sounds ugly and possibly offensive. But the virtues guide us to play the right notes.

As members of Christ, we are automatically members of his body, the church. We are therefore not called to be soloists, but to be members in an orchestra. We are each called to play our own part with our own instrument. Each of us is unique yet part of the whole. Earlier in the chapter Paul says, “It was [Christ himself] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (4:11-2). This morning we ordained 2 new elders and a deacon. While we all play a particular instrument, maybe we have a trumpet section, and a violin section. The elders and deacons are then like the lead players of each section. They are called to lead and encourage the whole section to play the best they can play, to “equip them for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.”

So we have the musical staff, the different instruments and sections all playing different notes but harmoniously together, but only if they all follow the same rhythm. Later in the letter Paul says, “be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit” (5:18-19). The spiritual disciplines and practices of the church set the rhythm of the church and the Christian life. We meet every week for corporate worship. Maybe we meet every other week in a small group. We each have our own times to “practice,” maybe daily or weekly. We pray, read and meditate on scripture, and give of our time and money to support the church and those who are in need. We take one day a week off from work to rest and observe the Sabbath. The rhythms of the spiritual disciplines open us up to the movements of the Holy Spirit and keep us in time with the Spirit of God and Jesus, the director of the orchestra.

Sisters and brothers, let us together “Be imitators of God … as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Jesus showed us the love of God through his life and through his death on the cross, but he also showed us the humility of God – the God who loved us so much he was willing to humble himself and become incarnate so that he could lead us into a life of obedience and faithfulness by dying on a cross for us. So let us seek to follow Christ in love and humility so that we may become genuine imitations of God.

Almighty God, in Christ you came to us in the flesh to teach us, to heal us, to lead us into a life of obedience and to overcome death and sin through his death and resurrection. Fill us with your Spirit that we may put off our old selves and put on our news selves, created to be like you in love and humility. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] This morning I have something for you. I have some heart stickers for you. Know when you see a heart, what does it mean to you? It means love. So if someone gave you a heart sticker, maybe that would mean that they loved you, right? And you could take that sticker and put in on your shirt. Then every time you saw it you would remember that someone who loves you.

Two weeks ago Isaak was baptized. Here at Hessel Park we baptize by putting water from here onto someone’s head. Now baptism is sort of like a heart sticker. Baptism is a sign, a symbol, that God loves us. But it reminds us that God loves us in very special ways. Baptism reminds us that God adopts us as his children. Baptism reminds us that God washes away our sins. He forgives us. And baptism reminds us that God gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can love him, trust in him and obey him better. In all these ways baptism reminds us that God loves us.

So I am going to give you each a page of heart stickers. You can then give a sticker to anyone you want so they can look at the sticker and remember that you love them. And so when you come to church, remember to look at the baptismal font and remember that God loves each and every one of us. [End]

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The Lord said through the Prophet Isaiah, “Forget the former things; Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19). Each Sunday during Lent I have begun our service reciting this verse from Isaiah and pouring water into the baptismal font. I have done this to remind us each week of our baptism. I have done this to remind us that our way out of exile and the wilderness is found in Christ. For in baptism we are united with Jesus Christ and so adopted as God’s children, forgiven of our sin, and anointed with the Holy Spirit. In Christ we die with him so we too will be raised with him. God’s love for us in Christ brings us out of exile.

Let’s take a moment and name some of the ways we find ourselves in exile and in the wilderness. When you turn on the news, or open the paper, or look at your facebook feed, what are some of the ways you see people in the world experiencing exile and the wilderness? Refugees, police shootings, mass shootings in schools, the opioid crisis, immigration issues, DACA, talks between the U.S. and North Korea. The list goes on and on. We live in a broken, sinful world. A world crying out for God. Remember all these things and they will become our prayer of God’s people later in the service.

But let’s also think of some of the ways we as individuals experience the wilderness and exile? How are we broken? Where do we see the need for God in our lives? Sickness and disease, mental illness, anxiety, depression, need for employment, struggles with personal sin, broken relationships. We all as individuals also are crying out for God.

Over the season of Lent we have seen how God has brought his people out of exile and through the wilderness to himself. We have seen this through the stories of Abraham and Sarah, the People of Israel at Mount Sinai, and the People of Israel in wandering in the wilderness. We have seen how God has acted in the history of the people of Israel to redeem them. Last week we saw how the story of Israel comes to its fulfillment in the story of Jesus. Jesus acts as the faithful Israelite and fulfills the covenant on behalf of Israel.

In all of this we have found comfort and hope because we have seen the same God acting to bring his people back into relationship with him. Ultimately we see God bringing us to him by coming to us himself in Jesus. In Jesus God came to live with us, teach us, walk with us, heal us, and ultimately to die for us in order to forgive our sins and raise us with Christ into new life. In his book, Power, Service, Humility, New Testament scholar Reinhard Feldmeir argues that “[T]he superior power [of the pagan gods] is regarded as the decisive difference between the divine and the human.”[1] On the other hand, while the God of Israel is known for his great and awesome power, what makes the God of Israel distinct is that he uses his power for the sake of others, and particularly for the benefit of the weak and oppressed. The God of Israel is He who brings low the lofty and raises up the humble. In the biblical story, he uses his power first to create the conditions for life and then to oppose those forces that bring injustice and death and to save those oppressed by the forces of evil and death. God’s power is not a power for the sake of power, but a power that creates and saves.

Feldmeir finds this same dynamic at work in the New Testament in the ministry of Jesus.[2] In Greek the normal word for “miracle” is thaumata. A miracle in this sense is an act that breaks the laws of nature and causes “admiration of the wonder worker.” Jesus repeatedly shies away from the crowds when they begin to admire him too much for being a wonder worker. Thus, his acts of healing and other demonstrations of power are not called thaumata, works of wonder, but dunameis, acts of power. Jesus’ powerful acts point to the power of God and they demonstrate that in Jesus the reign of God, the Kingdom of God has come. His acts of healing and over nature are acts that bring life to those oppressed by disease and social stigma, and faith to those who doubt. They are acts that bring people out of exile and into the fullness of life. They are Kingdom acts of new creation.

This morning we celebrate the ultimate of these acts of power, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Last week we saw that Jesus acted for Israel, God’s people, in order to act on behalf of all humanity. The prophet Isaiah looks forward to Jesus’ resurrection when he says, “On this mountain [the Lord Almighty] will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth” (Isaiah 25:7-8). God overcame death and sin in the person of Jesus so that the resurrection of the One could be a down payment, a guarantee that God will one day overcome the death and sin of all. The resurrection of Jesus demonstrates God’s power to save and to recreate.

In a recent article in The Christian Century, husband and wife, John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan, examine the different understandings of Jesus’ resurrection held by the Western Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.[3] If you look at the handout in your bulletins you will see two depictions of the Resurrection. The one on the left represents a typical Western portrayal of the resurrection.[4] Jesus is shown rising from the grave by himself while the guards lay sleeping around the grave.

The picture on the right represents a typical Eastern Orthodox depiction of the resurrection.[5] Here we see Jesus rising up out of the land of the dead, standing over the defeated figure of death. The cross demonstrates the means of Jesus’ victory. You can also see broken chains and the keys of the gates of hades as well. But the Crossans point out that in this depiction Jesus is not alone. He pulls Adam and Eve, the two on the left, out of their graves. On the right you see that Israel is present too in the figures of David and Solomon.

The Crossans argue that the West celebrates an individual resurrection, while the East celebrates a universal resurrection. They argue that the Eastern tradition is more biblical because there is no actual depiction of the event of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament. It happens off stage, so to speak. They argue that the rest of the New Testament teaches a universal resurrection. The point of the resurrection is not the actual fact of Jesus’ resurrection. That’s rather immaterial. Rather, they argue the resurrection of Jesus is a “reality creating metaphor” that has significance for all of humanity. Jesus’ resurrection signifies the metaphorical resurrection of Israel, Adam and Eve, and all their descendants. The resurrection is a symbol, a story, which vindicates the kind of life Jesus lived, a life of love and sacrifice that eschewed violence. The resurrection is thus a “reality creating metaphor” because it leads all of humanity out of our hatred and violence and into more ethical modes of human interaction.

While I don’t agree with the Crossans’ conclusions, I do believe they bring up important differences between the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity. But these differences call us to embrace the truths found in each tradition. Rather than seeing these as competing traditions, we should see them as traditions that correct and enhance one another.

I agree with the Crossans that Western Christianity has become too individualized. We typically think about resurrection, or our baptism, or any aspect of Christianity in terms of my own personal relationship with God and Jesus. But then we struggle to figure out how this then applies to our life in the world, our work, our relationship with others, to politics, economics, and to society in general.

But if we remember that Jesus acted for Israel on behalf of all humanity, then we see the truth depicted in the Eastern iconography. Christ came to redeem all humanity. His death and resurrection were sufficient to remove the shroud of death that covers all the nations. Christ’s resurrection does vindicate the life and ministry of Jesus. It demonstrates that the life of love and service Christ lived, that his refusal to resort to violence, that his trust in God are the true ways of life. Humans cannot overcome sin and death and violence and hatred by resorting to violence and hatred. They can only be overcome through love and faith in the God of love and the God of life. The God who makes a way in the desert and provides streams in the wilderness. What the Eastern Iconography reminds us is that God resurrected Jesus for the sake of all humanity, but not only for humanity, but also for the world itself. We hope not only for our resurrection as humans, but also for the renewal, the resurrection of the earth.

By starting with the universal we can then move, as God does, to the communal. God calls to himself a people, not mere individuals, to live out of the love and faith of Jesus and into the new life he has promised. The church is that community that has been joined to Christ through faith and baptism to live and speak in such a way to point to Christ and his ways. It is a community that demonstrates a faith that God is the God of creation who acts in the world to overcome evil, sin and death to save humanity. It is a community that knows and believes that Christ came to defeat sin and death and evil for all humanity. It is a community that then announces the good news that Jesus is risen, and thus that Jesus is Lord. We then invite others to join us in this way of faith and life.

We therefore move from the universal, to the communal, to the individual. Attempting to figure out how to apply our faith to the world moves in the wrong direction for it begins with the individual. Rather, we must start with God’s kingdom and figure out how to conform our lives to the world God is making. Our calling is to seek to conform our lives to Christ so that we can be witnesses of the Kingdom, proclaiming in our words and deed the good news that is for all humanity.

The thing is that the good news we proclaim is good news precisely because it actually happened. The resurrection of Jesus vindicates the life and ministry of Jesus only if he actually rose from the dead. The Crossans argue that the Western depiction of the resurrection is not biblical because the Bible doesn’t record anyone actually witnessing the resurrection. The Crossans ignore numerous statements by Peter and Paul that attest to the actual, physical resurrection of Jesus. “We are witnesses,” Peter proclaims in Acts 10:39. Moreover, there are several biblical scenes in which Jesus’ followers encounter a real, bodily, physical Jesus who eats and drinks with them. But this real, physical Jesus is not bound to our physicality. He appears and disappears at will. Walls and doors and tombs present no obstacle to him. In other words, Jesus rose from the dead in the darkness of the tomb, but then probably left the tomb. The stone was moved away from the tomb not to let Jesus out, but to let the women and the disciples in. No one, not even the guards, witnessed the resurrection of Jesus.

The Eastern depiction of the resurrection is a metaphorical depiction because it depicts not the event of the resurrection, but the universal meaning of the resurrection. But the Western depiction of the resurrection is also metaphorical. Jesus rises up out of a coffin. He is not walking out of the tomb. It too points to the meaning of the resurrection: Jesus himself, physically, bodily rose from the dead. It demonstrates that God is the God who acts in history, who creates out of nothing, and who brings life out of death.

Friends, we believe in the God of creation who has acted and continues to act within history. We can place our hope for the future in God because God has acted in the past and he continues to act in the present. We can hope for a time when God will “destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; [when] he will swallow up death forever” because death and sin have already been defeated by the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ resurrection is our guarantee, it is God’s promise to humanity, that he is making a way in the desert towards the new heavens and the new earth. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The King of the Jews
(Mark 11:1-11; 15:1-15, Philippians 2:5-11 )
There is no audio for this sermon.

[Children’s sermon] I don’t know if you can see it but I have a little pin on my lapel here. Can anyone see what it is? It is a little golden cross. The letters WSFD are etched into this cross and they stand for the West Saville Fire Department. When my dad was a young boy he lived in a town called West Saville, New York. This cross was his dad’s, my grandfather. My grandpa had this cross because he was the pastor of the church in West Saville and also the chaplain for the West Saville Fire Department. When my grandfather died, my grandmother gave me this pin because I was going to become a pastor just like my grandfather. She told me that every week she had to take the pin out of the suit my grandfather wore the Sunday before and put it on the suit he was going to wear the coming Sunday. So whenever I wear this pin, I think of my grandfather.

I wonder if you have something special that helps you remember someone you love. Maybe you have a favorite toy that your aunt or uncle gave to you. Maybe you have a shirt or a dress that your grandparents gave to you. Maybe you have a doll or a game that your cousin gave to you. Do you have anything like that? So whenever you play with your special toy, or wear your special shirt or dress, you remember whoever gave it to you.

This morning you all marched around waving palm branches. We do that because it helps us remember when Jesus came into Jerusalem. His disciples and all the people along the road grabbed palm branches and sang songs as they walked with Jesus into Jerusalem.

So we wave the palm branches because it helps us remember Jesus, but why do you suppose the people walking into Jerusalem that day waved the palm branches? Well, King Solomon had palm branches carved into the walls of the temple (1 Kings 6:29). The temple was the place that God was present with his people Israel. So the Jewish people saw palm branches as a symbol of God’s presence with them. When they saw Jesus coming into Jerusalem, they hoped that he would be their king, and that mean that God would be with them again. So we too can wave the palm branches not only to remember that day Jesus came into Jerusalem, but also to remember that in Jesus God was and is with us in a very special way. [end]

* * * * * * * * * *

On Thursday students from Parkland, Florida, attended an assembly at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Southwest Washington, D.C., an urban charter prep school whose students are almost all African American, and from very low income families. They came to invite the Marshall students to join them in their March for Our Lives which was held yesterday in downtown D.C., and drew an estimated 800,000 people. The purpose of the March was to demand that Congress take legislative action that addresses school safety and gun violence.

There are many things that have impressed me and others about these Parkland students. One thing stood out in this meeting and in some interviews I heard leading up to this event. David Hogg, one of the Parkland students, addressed the assembly and said, “We’ve seen again and again the media focus on school shootings and oftentimes be biased toward white-privileged students. Many of these communities [meaning communities such as Southwest D.C.] are disproportionately affected by gun violence, but they don’t get the same media attention that we do.”[1] The Parkland students are very aware that the high profile, mass school shootings almost always take place in relatively wealthy, white suburbs, but that students who live in many urban areas deal with gun violence on the streets on a more constant basis. At one point one of the Parkland students asked who among the Marshall students had known a friend or relative who had died from gun violence. Dozens of hands shot into the air.

What impressed me was that the Parkland students are not just seeking to get their message heard. They are reaching out to other teens, in other settings, from other contexts. They are using the media attention focused on Parkland to bring to light the violence and fear that many urban teens live with their whole lives. While they marched yesterday for “Our Lives,” they seek to make the “our” bigger than themselves.

The “March for Our Lives” was a deliberate political action. It was a protest march. We probably think of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem as just some sort of religious event. Jesus and many Jews from all over the world came to Jerusalem to celebrate a religious feast, the Feast of Passover. In the context of the Roman occupation of Israel, however, the Feast of Passover always had explosively political overtones. During Passover the Jewish people celebrated their liberation from the land of Egypt and slavery. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, Passover piqued their hopes for a Messiah, a savior, someone who would lead Israel in rebellion against the Romans. They longed for the return of the King.

And so Jesus deliberately sets the scene. He tells his disciples to go where they will find a colt for him to ride upon. They find it and bring it back. Jesus mounts it and rides down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. The disciples and the pilgrims walking along the road pick up on the imagery taken from Zechariah 9:9, “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey.” And so the disciples and the people gather palm branches, wave them in the air and lay them on the ground in front of Jesus as they sing the words of Psalm 118, “Hosanna! Save us! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” And to make their hopes clear they sing, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:9-10). The crowds get that Jesus claims to be the King of the Jews.

Now when we look at something that Jesus does, we should always consider it from two perspectives: from a human perspective and from a divine perspective. For we believe that Jesus was God made flesh, both human and divine. So we have to ask what is Jesus doing in this story as a human, and what is Jesus doing in this story as God.

The first thing that Jesus does as a human is to stage a non-violent, or rather an anti-violence, protest. Like the students marching on Washington, Jesus is rejecting the weapons of war. He rides into Jerusalem as a King not on a warhorse, but on a colt, and not the colt of a horse, but the colt of a donkey. He rides into Jerusalem, in other words, not as a conquering warrior, but as a servant. Jesus, the King, the Messiah, will overcome the violent oppression of Rome not with a sword, but with humble service. Zechariah 9:10 reads, “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He [that is the coming King] will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Zechariah prophesied that God would bring peace and justice through the coming King of the Jews, but not by breaking the weapons of Babylon, or of Rome, not by breaking the weapons of the oppressors, but by breaking the weapons of the oppressed. God brings peace by breaking the weapons we rely upon rather than relying upon God.

And so as the King of the Jews Jesus ends up standing before Pilate. He refuses to answer to the insults, the accusations, and the beatings he receives. He admits that he is the King of the Jews and so receives the sentence pronounced over him by the crowds, “Crucify him.” The same crowds, mind you, who hailed him as the son of David just a week before. The irony is that the crowds probably turn on Jesus because he fails to take up arms against the Romans. He used a non-violent, anti-violence image to indicate to them that he was in deed the Messiah, but when he fails to lead a rebellion, they view him as a failed Messiah and clamor for him to be crucified.

Over the past several weeks we have been thinking about how God brings us out of our exile and the wilderness and back into communion with him. Several times in the past few weeks we have seen how God has done this by working with covenants. He made a covenant with Abraham, promising to be his God and calling Abraham to worship him simply because he is God. He made a covenant with Israel, promising to be their God and calling them to live in obedience to him as an example to the nations of what life in communion with God could be like. Last week we heard that God promised to make a new covenant with his people. We saw that through the Holy Spirit God would “put the law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Ezekiel 31:33).

The second thing Jesus does as a human is to fulfill another aspect of the new covenant. As the King of the Jews Jesus represents God’s people. He thus fulfills the covenant on behalf of God’s people. Jesus does for Israel what Israel kept failing to do. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, argues that the Bible is one long story of God speaking to humans and humans responding to God. “Here, in the story of Jesus,” he writes, “is the story in which we see what an unequivocal obedience and love look like. Here is the story where we see a response to God so full of integrity, so whole, that it reflects the act of God that draws it out.”[2] “See,” the prophet says, “your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation.”God now puts his law in our minds and writes it in our hearts because in Jesus Israel has finally obeyed him fully and completely. In Christ we stand before God as those who are righteous and so God, through the Holy Spirit, begins to transform our hearts so that we willingly follow him.

So as a human, as the King of the Jews, Jesus first breaks the violence of human beings and our reliance upon our own strength. In other words he breaks our rebellion against God. Second, he leads us back into full obedience to God so that we may obey God fully. And third, as a human being, Jesus trusts God fully. As the King of the Jews, Jesus places his whole life into the hands of God, and though innocent, submits to the punishment of the cross. In this way Jesus brings salvation for he becomes our sacrificial lamb. On the night of the Passover Mark tells us that

Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”(Mark 14:22-24).

Jesus is the innocent one who is sacrificed for the sins of the guilty. And his sacrifice is accepted because he is full of faith and fully faithful. He trusts and obeys God fully. And so when Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple in front of the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence dwelled with his people, is torn in two. The barrier that separated humanity from God is ripped apart. Jesus’ sacrifice brings Israel out of exile and back into communion with God.

Jesus does all that as a human, as the King of the Jews, but we must also remember that Jesus acts not only as a human, but as God. As I mentioned in my children’s sermon, the palm branches the people waved as Jesus road into Jerusalem reminded them of God’s presence with them in the temple. The people of Israel looked to the return of their King not only as the time when Israel would be freed from her oppressors, but also as the time when God himself would return to them. In Zechariah’s prophecy, after the return of the king riding on a colt in 9:9, verse 14 reads, “Then the Lord will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning, the Sovereign Lord will sound the trumpet; he will march in the storms of the south.” Jesus not only brings Israel to God, but God to Israel for he himself is God.

And so Jesus came not only to bring Israel to God and God to Israel, but humanity to God and God to humanity. If Israel claimed God to be “our God,” God comes to Israel in Jesus to expand the “our” to include people from every tribe and tongue. What Jesus did for Israel, he did for all humanity. And God comes to Israel through Jesus in order to come to all humanity. And so Paul concludes:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11)

Of course Paul quotes this beautiful hymn to Christ because he desires the church in Philippi and us to live in a certain way. “Your attitude,” he writes, “should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (2:5). In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Silence

We praise you, O God,

for your redemption of the world through Jesus Christ.

Today he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph

and was proclaimed Messiah and king

by those who spread garments and branches along his way.

Let these branches be signs of his victory,

That he has ended humanities exile from God

and brought God into communion with us.

Grant that we who carry them

may follow him in the way of the cross,

that, dying and rising with him, we may bear witness to his coming kingdom;

The New Covenant
(John 12:20-30; Jeremiah 31:31-34)
There is no audio for this sermon.

[Children’s sermon] Once upon a time there was a young owl who lived in her mother’s nest. One day the mother owl scooted the chick to the edge of the nest and said, “You are now old enough to fly. Spread your wings and trust the wind.” With that she scooted the chick out of the nest. The chick started flapping her wings and she fluttered to the ground, but she did not fly. The next day the mother owl said, “Spread you wings and trust the wind,” and scooted her chick out of the nest. The chick started flapping her wings and she fluttered to the ground, but she did not fly. And so again the next day the mother owl said, “Spread your wings and trust the wind.” And this time, when the mother owl scooted her out of the nest the chick spread her wings and she glided through the air. [Throw paper airplane] The chick flew up and down, left and right as she learned to trust in the wind.

Sometimes when we think about God, we think that our relationship to God is mainly about all the things God wants us to do. We think about all the ways we have to obey God. But then we can be like that owl chick when she is pushed out of the nest who flapped and flapped and flapped her wings, but couldn’t fly. We try to obey God on our own strength and we try to please God with our own efforts. But God made owls with wings that catch the wind and he made us with spirits that catch the Holy Spirit. We were made to trust in God and so the only real way to obey God and to please God is to first trust in God. [End]

* * * * * * * * * *

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter gets into trouble with the new professor, Professor Umbridge.[1] When Harry arrives in her office to serve his detention, she orders him to write out “I must not tell lies.” “How many times,” he asks. “As long as it takes for the message to sink in,” she replies. He begins to take out his quill, but she stops him and gives him her own, special quill. As Harry begins to write he feels a prick on his hand. The stinging continues until he notices that as he writes, the letters are cut into his hand and then quickly disappear. Professor Umbridge’s quill is a magical quill that she has turned into a sadistic form of corporal punishment. After a second evening of detention, “I must not tell lies” blazes across the back of Harry’s hand as though he had been branded with a hot iron.

Of course the lesson doesn’t really sink in to Harry. This is in part due to Harry’s determination not to let Professor Umbridge get the better of him, but more so to the fact that what Harry had said was in fact the truth. He had not been lying. If the incident had happened today, Umbridge would have accused Harry of publishing fake news. In spite of his punishment Harry continues to hold to what he said is the truth. No matter how much Umbridge scars Harry with her magic quill, she can’t turn Harry into something he is not.

Over the past several weeks we have been looking at how God leads us out of exile and the wilderness and back home to him and to wholeness. God first calls us to trust in him as God. That is to trust him with our whole lives and then to follow him in all aspects of our lives. Last week Mike Moore spoke of how the we have to be born again by the Holy Spirit. This morning I would like to look a bit more at our own efforts to make ourselves right with God and what it means to trust in the Holy Spirit.

When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, this was part of the covenant he was making with them. At Mount Sinai God said to them, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4-6). God saved Israel form Egypt and then gave them the Ten Commandments so that they could fulfill the mission he set out for them, to be a holy nation of priests, to demonstrate to the world what life in communion with God was like.

The problem was that Israel could never live up to her end of the covenant. Almost from the beginning she began to break it. In a sense, God’s first covenant with Israel was sort of the reverse of how Umbridge tried to corrupt Harry Potter with her magic quill. And if we have ever tried to become better people, if we have ever tried to obey God’s laws, if we have ever tried to not sin, we too have probably experienced the same thing. And that is this. We try to change who we are by applying some form of outward pressure on ourselves or by changing our outward behavior.

Some of you may have heard this story before, but when I was in High School my older brother Dan excelled in art. Our school gave such students an incredible amount of freedom to develop their passion. Dan, along with a select group of a dozen other students, took independent studies in art. Mr. Valemakie, the art teacher, turned one of the art rooms into studio space so each of these students had their own space to work on their art projects whenever they had free time. And, of course, being art students, they always had the latest music playing on the boom box. Bands that you couldn’t hear on the radio but had to buy at the record shops down in campus town.

Well, I thought that was pretty cool. After receiving an A in my freshman art class, I asked Mr. Valemakie if I too could take an independent study in art. He agreed, but since I hadn’t yet proved myself, I didn’t get my own studio space, but was allowed to work in the art studio on one of the counters. The problem was that I did not love art. Dan loved art. He was an artist. He and the others worked on their own projects whenever they got the chance. I just thought it was cool, but I had little passion for it. I was not an artist at heart. And so at the end of the semester, after turning in a couple of photographs, one painting, and a model for a sculpture, Mr. Valemakie gave me a grade that told me he knew the meaning of grace, but it came with the understanding that I would look for my true passion elsewhere.

In his book, Desiring God’s Will, David Benner talks about the difference between willfulness and willingness.[2] Willfulness is when we set ourselves out to accomplish something through our own grit and determination. We admire willfulness as a culture here in North America. Willfulness lies at the heart of the American story. A couple immigrates to the United States from Ghana. Although a doctor and a lawyer back home, they can only find jobs as a janitor and a legal aid here in the states. But, working long hours and sometimes two jobs a piece, they provide a decent life for their children. The children go to college and they become a doctor and a lawyer, fulfilling the dreams of their parents. This hard work and determination, this set your mind to something and overcoming all the obstacles, that is what we admire here in the United States. Or, at least that is the myth we tell ourselves.

Now there is much to admire in willfulness, and it is necessary in life to have some level of grit and determination. But reliance solely on willfulness ends up being harmful and destructive particularly to our spiritual life. When we set ourselves up to follow God’s laws and please him by our own determination, we set ourselves up for failure. Professor Umbridge couldn’t make Harry into a liar by trying to force him to deny the truth because Harry was, at heart, truthful. Our problem, however, is the opposite. We can’t make ourselves be righteous and obedient to God’s will because we are, at heart, sinners. We can’t force ourselves to be obedient and kind and loving, but we can put on a pretty good show.

And that is particularly where the danger lies. If we think following God is all about doing the right things and being the right kind of person, we can fake it. On the outside we can dress ourselves up as loving, kind, and generous people who are devoted to God. But on the inside we merely feed the person we are trying to cover up. On the inside we begin to take pride in ourselves for being better than others. On the inside we begin to judge others for their failings. But of course we use our pride and our judgementalism in order to hide our own failings from others, from ourselves, and ultimately from God.

The Apostle Paul would call this person, or this persona, that we build up the “old self.” Many who write about spiritual transformation today call this the false self. This is the old, false self because we were not made to be independent, autonomous beings. We were not made to be self-determined. We were not made to make ourselves through our willfulness. While the truth about ourselves is that we are sinners, there is a deeper truth. The deeper truth about ourselves is that we were made in the image of God to be in communion with and dependent upon God and others. And those who have faith in Christ have another, deeper truth - we are being remade into our new selves. Those with a willingness to submit to God in Christ are being reborn into their true selves.

According to Benner the difference between willfulness and willingness is a matter of direction. “Looked at carefully,” he writes, “willfulness is more against something than for something.”[3] I tried to exert myself in art class over and against my true passions and loves, and failed miserably. In our self-determined efforts to follow God’s will, we strive against our own sinful nature. We strive against what people might think of us if they knew the truth. We strive against others so that we look better than them. But, if we are honest, in all this striving against we fail miserably.

In Jeremiah, God states how his first covenant with Israel was not working. He says that he will make a new covenant that will be different from the old because, “they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them.” In contrast, in the new covenant God promises, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Benner writes, “Genuine Christian spirituality places the priority on inner transformation, not outward routines.”[4] Worship, scripture reading, prayer and the other spiritual disciplines are a means to an end. They are assistants to a changed heart and a changed relationship with God. They are means of grace by which we open ourselves up to the work of the Holy Spirit. They are the tools of willingness.

As opposed to willfulness, willingness is an “act of willing surrender,” as Benner writes. Willingness is “a choice of openness, a choice of abandonment of self-determination, a choice of cooperation with God.”[5] In his letter to the Philippians Paul urges the church to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (2:12-13). As we give up on our own powers, our own grit and determination, as we surrender ourselves to God, as we die to our old, false selves, God begins to write his law, his will, on our hearts, thus raising up, bringing to life our new, true selves.

Last week we were reminded that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” For, “just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-16)This week Jesus says much the same again, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32)

On the cross Jesus took up our old humanity, that striving, self-determined, do it my way, humanity and died to it and to the sin that controlled it. He died to humanity’s willfulness so he could lead humanity into willingness. “Not what I will, but what you will,” he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). He did this because it is as he said, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The one who loves their life will lose it, while the one who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). That is the one who dies to the old, false self and allows God to raise the new self will live in communion with God.

In my children’s sermon I spoke of how God made owl’s wings to catch the wind. There is simple way that we can see how this works. So if you take a small strip of paper, put it up to your lips and blow underneath it, what is going to happen? The air will push the paper up, correct? Now, what if I put the paper beneath my lips and blow over top? What will happen? Nothing? [Blows and the paper rises up] You see the air moving faster over the top of the paper creates lower air pressure above the paper, which draws the paper up, while the higher air pressure below pushes the paper up. God made bird wings so that the air flowing around them would flow faster over the top than the bottom creating this automatic lift.

Friends, God made us in his image, in the image of a triune God, in the image of a God that is always and fundamentally interdependent and in community. We were made to be in community and dependent upon God and interdependent upon others. But we sinned through our willfulness. We sinned by our attempt to be self-determined and autonomous. The truth of our selves is that this led us into exile away from God and into the wilderness. The truth of our selves is that we continue to struggle with our willfulness. The truth of our selves is that we are sinners. The deeper truth, however, is that in Christ, through our willingness, through our surrender to God and our trust in God, we are forgiven sinners and the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, is catching our wings of to raise us into our new and truer selves. Friends in Christ, spread your wings and trust in the Breath of God. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] Once upon a time there was a lion who was queen of the forest. One day all the animals came before the queen to learn what kind of animal each was. The monkey came before the queen and bowed low. “You are a monkey,” the queen said, “You may walk upon the earth and swing in the trees, but you shall not fly.” The great eagle came next. “You are an eagle,” the queen said. “You shall fly through the air, but you shall not swim in the water.” Finally came the fish. ‘You are a fish. You shall swim in the river, but you shall not walk upon the earth.”

Each of the animals went home and they were content to be the animal they were created to be … for a while. One day the monkey said to himself. “Who does the lion queen think she is by telling me what I can and cannot do.” So the monkey climbed the tallest tree it could find. It jumped off, spread its arms out and, of course, began flapping wildly as it hurtled to the ground. At just the last second the eagle swooped down and caught the monkey. Setting him down on the ground, the eagle said, “Silly monkey, you are a monkey. You cannot fly.”

Then one day the fish thought, “Who does the lion queen think she is, telling me what I can and cannot do. I want to explore the land.” So the fish flopped up out of the water and onto the river bank. It flopped around and then began gasping for air. The monkey came running up, picked the fish up and tossed it back into the river. “Silly fish,” said the monkey. “You are a fish. You cannot walk up on the land.”

The next day the eagle thought, “Who does the lion queen think she is, telling me what I can and cannot do. I want to see what is at the bottom of the river.” So the eagle flew high up and then came down as fast as she could and dove into the river. She dove down to the bottom, but then got caught in the current. Gasping for breath, she felt something pushing it out of the current and up to the surface. “Silly eagle,” said the fish. “You are an eagle. You cannot swim under water.”

Sometimes we may think that God’s commands are kind of silly. Maybe we think we know better and can decide for ourselves what we can and cannot do. But God gave us his commandments because he loves us. By following his commands, we learn to be and to behave as the people God created us to be. [End]

* * * * * * * * * *

I suppose that the Ten Commandments are probably taken out of their context more than about any other passage from scripture except the Lord’s Prayer. We use the Ten Commandments as this list of don’ts, well, and one do that comes to us as if they dropped down out of heaven. Now while I do believe that the Ten Commandments are commands that apply to all people of all times, and that they address the whole of human life, it would be good to first look at them in their biblical context, to see how and why they address all peoples and the whole of life.

The setting is that God has redeemed Israel and he has brought them into the wilderness to Mount Sinai. Moses is now going up and down the mountain to speak with God and then to tell the people what God has said. In this way God is making a covenant with the people. In 19:4 we read:

This is what you [Moses] are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'

God has been Israel’s God, and now he is instructing them on how to be his people. His desire is that they be his holy, set apart people so that the world might come to know something about God through them. They are to be a priestly nation and priests serve, like Moses, as intermediaries between God and others. The Ten Commandments are thus rules for the whole of life. They are in concise form how the Israelites are to live their whole lives in obedience to God so that the whole world might come to know how to live before God and thus to be truly and fully human.

Now what struck me about this passage I just quoted was the first line. “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob,” and then he repeats himself, “and what you are to tell the people of Israel.” Someone pointed out in our Classis meeting last week that it is an oddity that Jacob is sometimes referred to as Israel and sometimes as Jacob even after God changes his name. Several people in the Bible have their names changed: Abraham and Sarah, for instance. But after God changes their name they are never referred to by their old name, always the new one. Except Jacob / Israel.

So why is that? Well God changes people’s names because names have meaning. Jacob is named Jacob because he comes out of his mother’s womb grasping at his brother’s heel. Jacob literally means “heel grabber.” Figuratively it means someone who deceives another. As the story goes, of course, Jacob lives up to his name. He deceives his brother. He deceives his father and his uncle Laban. But after a life of deception, and a life mostly lived in exile, Jacob is given another name, Israel. Israel may mean a couple of things. It can mean, “God prevails,” or “God contends,” but it can also mean “one who struggles with God.” When Jacob is given his name he is told, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with humans, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).

Jacob / Israel is the one who struggles with God and with humans. The descendants of Jacob and the people of Israel are thus those who continue to struggle with God and with humans. Are we not also the descendants of Jacob and the people of Israel? Do we not struggle with God and with humans? And is this not a key aspect of the wilderness, of our experience of exile in which we find ourselves?

Are we not sometimes like the animals of the forest who try to disregard the commandments of the King and to be something we were not created to be? Are we not, like Adam and Eve, sometimes in exile because of our sin, because we have distanced ourselves from God by following our own laws? Maybe our exile is because we struggle with God in this way. Or maybe we are in some form of exile or wilderness because others have sinned against us. Maybe it is because of our struggle with other human beings. Or maybe our exile or wilderness is found in our struggle with God over why he allows certain things to happen – why is there so much injustice? Why have do I have cancer? Why have I lost my job, or why can’t I find a job? In many ways our exile, our wilderness is a result of our struggles with God and other humans.

Last week we looked at the first step out of exile, to let God be God. That means to trust in God simply because God is God. It means to trust in God beyond the existential doubts and anxieties and fears we may have. Ultimately we are saved out of our exile and wilderness by trusting in God not because he will save us, but by trusting in God simply because he is God.

If the first step out of exile is to let God be God, the second step is found in the Ten Commandments. The second step out of exile is to allow God to have complete sway over our whole lives, over all aspects of our lives. It is, in short, as the Ten Commandments begin, to have no other gods before God

Many have noted that the Ten Commandments are divided into two sections. The first four commandments deal with our relationship to God, and the last six commandments deal with our relationship to humans. They are, in this way, a guide to how put an end to our struggles with God and with humans. They are a guide to how we are to live at peace, in shalom with God and with others.

So if we look at the first four commandments, we have a summary of how we ought to relate to God. First of all, God is to be God, and that means he is to be the only God. We are to have no other gods except the one true God. Like the Israelites, we continue to fail at this for we have created our own, modern gods. Money, Military and Economic power, and Success, to name a few.

We often think of the second commandment as the one that forbids idolatry because it actually forbids the making of images to which we bow down. Humans often break both commandments at the same time. They not only worship another god, but they craft an image to represent their god. In our worship of Money and Power, we don’t make physical images, but we do develop ideologies. But it is possible to break the second command without breaking the first. The Israelites made the golden calves in order to worship God through them. Today I think we can break the second commandment by making idols of our religious practices, our theologies, and even by making an idol of the Bible. We worship these human, and partial human creations in the case of the Bible, as a means to our worship of God. But instead of offering true worship to God, we seek to exert some level of control over God through these the idols we make.

The third commandment speaks to how we are to address God. We are to honor and respect God in all our speech.

The first four commandments address several aspects of our relationship with God. How we relate to God in general, materially, and how we speak about God. The fourth commandment addresses time. We are to set one day of seven apart when we don’t work so that we recognize that God is the Lord of time itself. Doing no work on the Sabbath is a gift to us for then we recognize that God is God. We are not ultimately responsible for all things. He is.

So now let us turn to see how the last six commandments cover perhaps the whole range of human behaviors and interests towards each other. The fifth commandment teaches us to honor not just father and mother, but all those who are in proper authority over us. The sixth commandment teaches us not to take the life of others but also to look out for the welfare of our fellow human beings. The seventh commandment forbids us from committing adultery, but also encourages us to honor our sexuality. The eighth commandment addresses how we should treat other’s possessions and what they are rightfully owed. As the third commandment deals with our speech about God, so the ninth teaches us to speak with truthfulness about our neighbors. Thus the fifth through the ninth commandments cover a whole range of human activity: relationships of authority, basic life, marriage and sexuality, property, and our speech.

The tenth commandment, like the first, is more a general commandment. It addresses not so much our actions, but our desires. We should not only not steal our neighbor’s car or commit adultery with his wife, we shouldn’t even desire to have his car or his wife. We should not only not kill our neighbor, but we should not hate her. Rather we must love our neighbor as ourselves.

Now after going through the Ten Commandments and thinking about what they teach us to do and not to do, it is easy to get things backwards. It is easy to think that the way we are saved, brought out of exile is by being good people and doing what we are told. We must not, however, forget the first step. The first step is to have faith in God. To accept the reality that he is God, more so, that he is our God and we are his people. The second step depends on the first for it is to live out of that reality. It is to put that faith into faithful motion. To follow the ways of God is a step out of exile and the wilderness because it is a move towards our true humanity. It is to put an end to our struggles with God and with humans and to move towards the people God created us to be. But we can only be faithful in taking this step when we base it not on our own efforts and strengths, but on what God says to Israel in the introduction to the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” The second step is taken in response to the grace and mercy of the one true God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[Children’s sermon] Once upon a time there was a prince who loved a princess from the neighboring country. One day he decided he would ask her to marry him, so he gathered up all his bags of gold and travelled across his lands to her castle. When he arrived he had his servants carry all his bags of gold and to lay them before her. “Fairest Princess,” he said. “To show you how much I love you, I have brought all my bags of gold and laid them at your feet. Will you marry me?” The princess looked at him and the bags of gold and said, “No, I will not marry you for all your bags of gold, wealthy Prince.” The Prince went home saddened, but determined not to give up.

He thought and he thought about how he could win the heart of the Princess. Then one day he saddled his horse. He sharpened his sword. He filled his quiver with arrows, and he grabbed his lance. He set off into the mountains and there fought and slayed the evil dragon of the mountains. He rode as hard and fast as he could to the castle of the fair princess. “Fairest Princess,” he called out to her, “I sought and I slayed the evil dragon of the mountains to show you how much I love you. Will you marry me?” The princess looked at him and at his sword, and lance, and bow and arrows, and said, “No, I will not marry you for slaying the dragon, courageous Prince.” The Prince again returned home saddened, but determined not to give up.

He thought and he thought about what he could do to win the heart of the Princess. Then one day he gathered up all his musicians and they travelled to the castle of the fair princess. When they arrived the musicians got out their instruments and began to play as the Prince began to sing. His voice rang out like the clearest of church bells and the song he sang was so sad and beautiful and joyful all at the same time that all who heard it were weeping when it was over. “Fairest Princess,” he called out to her, “I have shown you how much I love you by singing my heart to you. Will you marry me?” The Princess looked at the musicians, and at the Prince. She wiped the tears from her eyes, and said, “No, I will not marry you for your beautiful song, talented Prince.” The Prince again returned home saddened, but still determined to win her hand in marriage.

He thought and he thought about what he could do to win the heart of the Princess, but he could not think of anything more to do. He had given her his wealth. He had shown her how courageous he was. He had performed his best for her. But he loved her so. He did not know what he was going to do, but he saddled his horse and traveled to her castle. “Fairest Princess, I have given you all my gold. I have slain the evil dragon for you. I have sung my best for you. I have done all this to show you how much I love you. I have nothing more but myself to give you. Will you marry me?” The Princess looked at the Prince and said, “Yes, I will marry you. That is all I ever wanted from you, just all of you.”

Sometimes we treat God in the same way that the prince treated the princess. We try to make God love us. We think God will love us if we do all the right things, or if we pray to him often enough, or if we give our money to the poor, or if we behave ourselves all the time. But Jesus once said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Jesus is like the Fair Princess, he may think we are brave, or generous, or good because of the things we do for him, but all he really wants is us. God already loves us. We can’t make God love us. But he just wants all of who we are. [End]

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This past week Evangelist Billy Graham passed away. He was ninety-nine years old. Billy Graham was at one time the most recognizable and most unifying figure in the Evangelical world. But he stepped out of public life several decades ago. Some people, when they reach a certain age, begin to slow down a bit. Some people, but not all, begin to think that once they reach their seventies or maybe their eighties, that maybe it is not the right time to start some new project. Maybe it is time to start slowing down.

Abram is ninety-nine years old. He has been living in the land of Canaan for 23 years. When Abram was just a youngster at age 76, God made a promise to him. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3). Abram believed God. And he waited. And he waited. Yet he remained childless and Sarai, his wife, remained barren.

So Abram decided upon a plan. He thought that he would just take Eliezer, his servant, as his heir. Maybe he could just sort of adopt Eliezer, and God could fulfill his promises through him. But God came to Abram and said, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir” (15:4). And God made a covenant with Abram. He made a solemn agreement that Abram’s descendants would live in the land of Canaan.

So Abram waited. And he waited some more. Then Sarai decided upon a plan. She told Abram to have a son with her handmaiden Hagar. In that way Abram could have the son God promised him. So that is what Abram did. Hagar became pregnant with Abram’s son. And he named him Ishmael.

Ishmael grew and reached the age of maturity, 13 years old in that culture, the age when a child becomes accountable for their actions. God then appears to Abram again. Abram is now ninety-nine years old, about time to maybe retire and pass things on to the next generation. God again confirms his promises to Abram. He changes Abram’s name to Abraham and says, “You will be the father of many nations. … I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” The Lord then instructs Abraham to circumcise himself and all men and boys in his household. This then becomes the sign of the covenant. If either party fails to live up to their part of the covenant, they will be cut off from the other.

But then God continues, “As for Sarai, you are no longer to call her Sarai, her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations.” Abraham falls on the ground laughing. “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” “What’s wrong with Ishmael?” Abraham asks. “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing.” We figured it all out, says Abraham. While you have been waiting and waiting to make good on your promise, we figured it out for you. Look, you have already given me a son through Hagar!” But God brushes Abraham and Sarah’s plans aside and assures Abraham that Sarah will bear a son, and that he will call him Isaac, Laughter, and that God’s covenant with Abraham will continue through Isaac.

And so God, faithful to his promise, blessed Sarah, and she conceived. She bore a son, and they named him Laughter. The boy grew, and one imagines, became the apple of his father’s eye. Until one day God appeared to Abraham again. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burn offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about” (22:2). And so begins perhaps one of the most troubling stories in scripture. God commands child sacrifice. But perhaps you know the story. Abraham gathers his son and his servant and the wood for the sacrifice. As they are traveling Isaac asks, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burn offering?” Abraham responds, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering” (22:7-8). And so with every step towards Moriah, Abraham mumbles to himself, “God will provide, God will provide.”

Over the past several weeks we have been looking at the nature of the wilderness experience, the times of exile, we all experience as humans and even as followers of Christ. During this season of Lent we will make a turn and begin to focus on our return from exile, our exit out of the wilderness. How, in other words, do we return home? How are we forgiven? How are we reconciled to God? How are we returned to wholeness?

Abraham and Sarah are the architypes of exile and living in the wilderness. God calls them out of the land of their ancestors and tells them to go to the land of Canaan. There they live as aliens for decades. During that time, they have to flee to Egypt, not once but twice, to escape famine. If Abraham and Sarah are our parents in the faith, than our faith is born out of the experience of exile and wilderness wandering. Moreover they live in the wilderness because Sarah is barren. They have no children. They thus have no future. In that culture their life is practically meaningless for they will die and be forgotten and their property will go to just a servant.

God, however, promises to be their God. He promises to bring them out of exile and the wilderness. He promises to give them a land and a progeny. He promises to make them mother and father not just of a child, not just some children, but of kings and nations! He promises to be their God and he gives them a sign to insure this promise, the sign of circumcision. But what is their part of the covenant? God promises to be their God, but what are they supposed to do?

Abraham and Sarah think they know what they should do. They do all they can to help God along. They scheme and plan to get a child for themselves, or at least for Abraham. They first look to a servant, Eliezer. Perhaps they could just appoint him as Abraham’s heir. Then Sarah gives her servant to Abraham so that he might have a child with her. As a side note, it is ironic that when they are in Egypt Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister. She is then taken into the Pharaoh’s harem. Abraham did this to save his own skin for he feared that Pharaoh would kill him and take Sarah for himself if he thought she were his wife. So both Abraham and Sarah sacrifice their marriage in order to try to help God out, in a sense.

But God comes to Abram and reconfirms his covenant with him. And he clarifies that Abraham’s son will be Sarah’s son. As an assurance he gives Abraham a sign, the sign of circumcision. This sign, however, basically means that God doesn’t necessarily want any particular thing from Abraham. He doesn’t want Abraham to act on his own to fulfill some part of the deal. What circumcision means is that God wants Abraham, period. In the covenant God promises to be our God. What he wants from Abraham and from us is that we let him be God. But to let God be God means that we allow him to have us, all of us, our entire being. In circumcision part of the male body is cut off to signify that if we fail in the covenant, we will be cut off, all of us. To be a part of the covenant is to be all in. It is to let God be our God.

That means that we have to learn to trust God, to have faith that God will be God. In her book, The Vulnerable Pastor, Mandy Smith writes about how she and her husband left Australia, following the call of God into ministry, but also with the faith that God would someday call them back to ministry in Australia. As Seminary led to parish ministry in the states, and then to frequent but unsuccessful applications to ministry opportunities in Australia ever few years, Smith finally realized that she had to stop trusting in the God who would bring her home. She believed that maybe God was asking her, “Do you trust in the God who will take you home? Or do you just trust?”[1]She then compares her experience to that of Abraham and Sarah, “I wonder if God was asking Abraham, Do you trust in the God who will give you a child? Or do you just trust?” For Abraham that meant, ironically, that he had to trust in God not because of the promises God made, but in spite of the promises he made. Abraham had to learn to trust not that God would give him a son, but just to trust in God.

Jesus teaches much the same thing. He begins to teach his disciples that he must go up to Jerusalem to be handed over to the religious and political authorities, to be killed by them, and then to rise from the dead. He teaches them that his role as the Messiah is to place his whole self, his life and his death, into the hands of God. His role is to in a sense, give up his immortality, to give up his being all powerful and all knowing. His role is to empty himself of his divinity and to let God be God.

He then says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). The cross we each must bear is the thing or the many things that we ourselves must die to in order to allow God to be God. Jesus, in a sense, died to be being God. We just have to die to pretending to be God. We may need to die to our trust in own strengths and abilities. We may need to die to our trust in politics or in wealth. We may need to die to our desire for God to rescue us out of our wildness. Whenever we put stipulations on God, whenever we say, I trust in God because I trust he will rescue me, then our god becomes the Rescue instead of God himself. God wants to be our God, but that means we must allow him to completely define and manage our relationship to him. We have to trust that God will be our God.

But when we allow God to be God, when we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus, when we lose our lives to God and to the good news of his kingdom, then we truly find ourselves, for then we are truly found in God. When we truly trust God just to be God, then we begin to notice more and more how God is faithful to his promises to us in ways we never imagined. We begin to notice how he is blessing us in ways we may not have been longing for. Maybe we had hoped, like Mandy Smith, that God would one day take us home. But if we trust in God to be God, we may find that God does bring us home, but not by bringing us back to the home we thought was home, but by redefining for us what home is. Maybe we had hoped to have a certain kind of career, or a certain kind of family life. If we allow God to be God, we will find that he will fulfill those hopes, but in ways that may redefine those hopes. If we lose our lives by allowing God to be God, then we will find our lives in what God provides for us. My friends, God has promised to be our God. Let us allow God to be our God. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Silence]

Into your hands, O Lord, we place our whole selves, trusting that your vision for our lives and the life of the world is far richer than we could ever ask or imagine. Renew in us daily the choice to lose our lives, to pick up our cross, and to follow you in loving service. Amen

Jars of Clay
(2 Corinthians 4:3-7; Mark 9:2-9)
There is no audio for this sermon.

[Children’s Sermon] Can anyone tell me what this is? It is a chrysalis. Who can tell me what is inside it or who made it? A caterpillar. And what will come out of it? A butterfly. So when a caterpillar is born, it begins to eat, and it eats and eats and eats, and it grows, and grows, and grows. Until one day the caterpillar has grown enough. It attaches itself to a twig or a branch and then it spins this chrysalis with silk thread it makes. It closes itself up inside, and then it waits. And while it’s waiting, it changes. It transforms. And when it is fully formed, it breaks through the cocoon and comes out as a butterfly.

Christians have long taken the butterfly as a symbol for resurrection. You know that when Jesus died on the cross they laid him in the tomb, but three days later he was raised from the dead, he was resurrected. The caterpillar makes the cocoon and sort of dies for a time, but then the caterpillar is resurrected as a butterfly.

In our story this morning, Jesus goes up on a mountain with Peter, James, and John, and his body is transfigured before them. It shines with a brilliant white light. And two of God’s servants who had died many, many years ago, Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus. In the story this is before Jesus dies on the cross. I think God transfigures Jesus and sends Moses and Elijah to talk with Jesus to help Jesus have the courage and trust he will need to die on the cross. God is sort of showing Jesus that death is not the end. So Jesus doesn’t have to be afraid of dying because God has promised to raise him from the dead.

This morning I have pictures for each of you of a caterpillar, a cocoon, and a butterfly. I want you to take these to help you remember that although Jesus died, God raised him from the dead. And even though each of us may die, or even though someone we love like a grandparent may die, God will one day resurrect us and give us new life, just like he resurrected Jesus and gave him new life. [End]

* * * * * * * * * *

In his short story, Christmas, Vladimir Nabakov writes of Sleptsov, a wealthy Russian nobleman grieving the recent death of his young son. He enters the coldness of their summer house that is locked up for the winter, and goes to his son’s study. He begins rummaging through his sons things – a notebook used as a diary, an old net with holes in it, spreading boards, black pins – the paraphernalia of his sons hobby, collecting butterflies and moths. His son would capture his specimens, pin them to the boards and label them with their appropriate Latin names. In the desk he also finds a cookie tin with a large exotic cocoon. On his death bed, his son had regretted leaving the cocoon behind in the summer home, but consoled himself that the chrysalis had probably died.

Gathering up some of his son’s things, Sleptsov puts them in a box and returns from the main house to the annex of the summer home, which his servant has now heated. He pours over his son’s notebook reading entries of where and how he captured various butterflies, what the weather was like, and various other activities until he groans, “I can’t bear it any longer.” Nabokov writes:

Sleptsov pressed his eyes shut, and had a fleeting sensation that earthly life lay before him, totally bared and comprehensible – and ghastly in its sadness, humiliatingly pointless, sterile, devoid of miracles … (sic) At that instant there was a sudden snap – a thin sound like that of an overstretched rubber band breaking. Sleptsov opened his eyes. The cocoon in the biscuit tin burst its tip, and a black, wrinkled creature the size of a mouse was crawling up the wall above the table. It stopped, holding on to the surface with six black furry feet, and started palpitating strangely. It had emerged from the chrysalid because a man overcome with grief had transferred a tin box to his warm room, and the warmth had penetrated its taught leaf-and-silk envelope; it had awaited this moment so long, had collected its strength so tensely, and now, having broken out it was slowly, miraculously expanding. .. [I]ts wings – still feeble, still moist – kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developing to the limit set for them by God. … And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness.[1]

In the midst of his grief, Sleptsov beholds nature’s model of resurrection, the transformation of a worm into a butterfly. Nabakov narrates the moment so that the reader is caught up in its beauty and awe. As one reads, you feel your chest rising as the butterfly shudders with “tender, ravishing, almost human happiness,” and then falling with a shared joy and contentment. The thing about life, human life, life in the natural world, is that if you take the time to notice, it will not fail to inspire and give you hope. The same is also true, if you take time to notice, of resurrection.

If you were to ask most people what Christianity was about, they might say something about Jesus coming to save the world. Some would certainly add that he came to save us from our sins. You would probably get lots of answers about how Jesus teaches us to love one another. And you might even get one or two answers that included something about Jesus rising from the dead. But unless resurrection is at the core of any answer about what Christianity is about, such an answer is woefully insufficient.

At its core, Christianity is a belief in the resurrection. It is the faith that after Jesus died on the cross, he was laid in a tomb, but on the third day, he rose again to a new and different yet similar physical, bodily life. The resurrection of Jesus, however, is not just a demonstration that he was actually the Messiah, or that he is God, the second person of the Trinity. It is not just a demonstration of God’s power and might. The resurrection of Christ, as Paul teaches us in 2 Corinthians 4:14, just after our text, that “we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus.” The resurrection of Jesus is a guarantee, it is the down payment, that those with faith in Christ will be resurrected too and will live in the age to come in his presence.

What’s more, the resurrection of Jesus is a guarantee, a down payment, that God will, in a sense, “resurrect” this whole world. Out of the brokenness and sin of this world, God will create a new world of wholeness and holiness. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s victory over sin, and death, and evil. It is the inauguration of the new age of God’s shalom-filled Kingdom, with Christ as its King. When we say that Jesus came to save us, it only makes full sense in the context of this reign of Christ over the whole creation.

It is no surprise, then, that within the arc of the biblical story from Eden to the New Jerusalem, resurrection serves as the primary narrative theme. All the themes of wilderness wanderings toward the promised land, of exile and return, of moving from sin to salvation, from sickness to health, from scarcity to abundance, all these themes point to and are summed up in the move from death to life, the theme of death and resurrection.

With that in mind, it becomes clear that Jesus’ transfiguration foreshadows his resurrection. In the preceding story, Jesus finally comes clean with his disciples and openly admits that he is the Christ, the Messiah. But then he begins to teach them that as the Messiah he must go to Jerusalem to be crucified, and then to rise from the dead. The preceding story foreshadows Jesus’ death. The transfiguration of Jesus and the appearance of two supposedly dead prophets foreshadows resurrection. To make the point clear, Jesus instructs his disciples as they are coming down the mountain not to tell anyone about what happened until he rises from the dead. And, just like his teaching about his death, the disciples don’t’ get it. Mark tells us that “they kept the matter to themselves, discussing what ‘rising from the dead’ meant” (10).

The question this text poses to us is do we get the resurrection? Does the resurrection stir in us awe and wonder? Does it inspire faith and hope in us? Does it move us to worship? Does it lead us, because of our awe, wonder, faith and hope, to do what Jesus calls us to do in the preceding story where he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:34-35). In other words, does Jesus’ resurrection move us to die to ourselves so that we might be reborn in Christ and for his Kingdom?

Or does it lead us to some other reaction as exemplified by the disciples? Does it lead to confusion and even unbelief? Does the disciple’s pre-modern pondering about what “rising from the dead” could mean, turn in to modern skepticism? For we all know that science proves that people don’t rise from the dead? Or does it morph into post-modern relativism? All kinds of religions have stories of resurrection, after all. Or does Peter’s attempt to capture the moment, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” (9:5), – does that turn into some form of religiosity that shields us from the claim resurrection makes upon us.

Let me suggest that when Peter offers to put up three shelters for Elijah, Moses, and Jesus, he is attempting to domesticate the moment through religious piety. The shelters Peter offers to build are not just any shelters. They are the tents, the tabernacles, the booths that the Jewish people built and still build today for the Festival of Booths. Every year Jewish people will build temporary shacks or tents to remember how they lived in tents for forty years while the wandered the desert of Sinai. The festival is meant to remind them of their time of wilderness wandering when God was so spectacularly and specially present to the children of Israel in the fiery pillar by night and the cloud by day. It reminded them of how God formed and shaped them into a holy nation by teaching them to rely upon him every day for manna and quail. It reminded them of how God saved them from the nations that threatened to wipe them out. It reminded them of the times God caused water to flow out of a rock. It reminded them of how God redeemed them from the land of slavery and brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Peter, however, wants to use the booths not as a reminder of his utter dependence up on God, but to capture this moment as if to savor it for himself. He wants to use religion for the sake of the experience itself. He wants to use religion for what he thinks is good and desirous for himself. The purpose of religion and religious practices, however, are for God to shape us for his purposes. Mark writes, “Then a cloud appeared and covered them; and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’” (7). Jesus brought Peter, James and John along with him not so that they could have a moving religious experience, but so that the image of his resurrection would move them to actually listen to him and follow him.

While I would not put the Christian Reformed Church or Hessel Park Church squarely in the American Evangelical box, it is one of the dominant religious cultures we interact with. It influences us. And one of the problems with American Evangelicalism is that it is especially susceptible to turning true religion into false religiosity. In her book, Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren, writes that Evangelicalism, “while beautiful in many ways, was formed and shaped by the concept of a market-driven religious experience.” From the revival meetings held during the First Great Awakening to the camp meetings held across the American frontier as people moved westward, charismatic preachers like George Whitfield and Charles Finney tailored their sermons and their religious services to create an intense, ecstatic religious experience. Warren writes, “My subculture of Evangelicalism tends to focus on … the kind of worship that gives a rush.”[2] The problem with this, she concludes, is that “faith becomes a consumer product – it asks little of us, affirms our values, and promises to meet our needs, but in the end it is just a quick fix that leaves us glutted and malnourished.”[3]

Ironically, one of the ways we can exile ourselves from God is through worship itself. The very thing that God gives us in order to shape us into the image of Christ and direct us to serving in his Kingdom we use to assuage our guilt, to justify our own biases, and make us feel good about ourselves. Now certainly God does meet our needs in worship. When we come to worship, we can expect God to be present to us. We will at times be relieved of our angst, freed of our guilt, comforted in our sorrow, and met in our loneliness. But we must also expect that in worship we will be challenged, upset, angered, and even made to feel guilt, sorrow and angst from time to time. Instead of approaching worship with a shopping list of expectations and demands that it conform to our tastes, we must approach worship with open hands and open hearts, receiving both the comfort and the sorrow, the guilt and forgiveness, the angst and the joy as blessings given not for our purposes, but for God’s purposes.

In the children’s sermon I said that the resurrection of Jesus is a promise to us that we too will be raised from the dead. We need not fear death. It is a comfort. But resurrection should also make us a bit uncomfortable. Resurrection, life out of death, is awe inspiring. While we are assured of new life in the resurrection of Jesus, his resurrection also reminds us that we must first die before we are reborn. The resurrection is the light of the gospel that Paul talks about in his letter to the Corinthian church. It is that which gives us hope and grounds our faith so that we may love others as Christ has loved us. But, says Paul, “we have this treasure in jars of clay.” Our bodies are weak and frail. We ourselves are broken and sinful. And so “we have this treasure in jars of clay,” says Paul, “to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Children’s sermon] When you do something wrong at home, do you ever get sent to your room? That was one of the punishments my parents used on my brother and me. But let me tell you, it was not a fair punishment. It wasn’t fair because my brother and I are very different people. I hated being alone. I always needed, or at least I always wanted someone to play with. I hated playing alone. I never had any hobbies because that meant sitting somewhere by yourself putting stamps or coins in an album or something like that. When I was growing up, my most popular question was, “Mom, can I call Tom, or Mike, or Matt, to see if they can come over to play?”

My older brother, Dan, however, loved being alone. He had several hobbies. He had a stamp collection, and he built model cars and airplanes. From an early age he knew he wanted to grow up to be an architect. He would stay up in his room for hours at a time and design his dream house. The thing I probably got most in trouble for was pestering Dan to play with me. And the thing that he got in trouble for was doing something mean to me so that I would leave him alone. So you see how unfair my parent’s punishment was? Being alone in his room was a reward for my brother, but for me it was utter torture.

In our gospel story today we read that Jesus got up very early in the morning, while it was still dark. He left the house and went to a deserted place, where he prayed. The gospels tell us several times that Jesus often went off by himself to pray to God. You see, Jesus needed to be alone with God so that he could do all the things he did. He needed to be alone with God so that he could preach to all the people he preached to, heal all the people he healed, and spend all the time he did teaching his disciples.

And that is one thing it has taken me many, many years to learn: I have learned to be by myself in a solitary place. But what I have learned is that I don’t have to be alone when I am by myself. If I pray, then I can be with God. So even though it took me many years to learn this, I don’t think you are ever too young to start learning. So the next time you are alone, remember that Jesus spent time alone too. He spent time alone praying to God. And so when you are alone, you too can pray to God and be with God. [End]

* * * * * * * * * *

I am going to say something that epitomizes the hypocritical preacher. But I am going to say it not because I am a hypocrite, but because I am honest, or at least I try my best to be appropriately honest. I am also going to say it because my guess is that I am not that much different than anyone else. Or rather that I am not alone in my failures. I assume that people in general fail in the same ways that I do. So, here goes: Do what I say, not what I do.

I say that because as I sat down to write my sermon, I realized that couldn’t say what I wanted to say and pretend that I completely practice what I wanted to preach. People say, “Preacher, practice what you preach. And if you don’t, you are a hypocrite.” Someone who is gracious, however, will say, “Preacher, do your best to practice what you preach. And don’t pretend that you are perfect.” And so, while I may not perfectly practice what I am preaching today, I am trying.

So this past week I was sick for most of the week. Sickness can be God’s way of telling us that we need to slow down and take a break. I think I got sick not because God was trying to tell me anything, but because the flu is going around. But I guess I will never know because I really didn’t take the time to listen to God while I was sick. So here I was laying around for the better part of three days, and I failed to take the time I normally take to read scripture, pray, meditate, and just be alone with God. On Monday I just felt horrible, so doing much of anything but watching television was pretty difficult. But on Tuesday I worked from home most of the morning and some of the afternoon. And on Wednesday I again worked from home. And then on Thursday my to-do list was still pretty big, so I skipped my devotional time and jumped right into work. I guess my thought was that since I was sick I had better put all the energy I did have into getting the work done that needed to get done.

But that is exactly the kind of thinking each of us needs to get over in order to make time spent alone with God part of our daily or weekly routine. We have to get over the thinking that our agenda, our to-do list, our responsibilities for work or family or whatever are ultimately important and time spent with God is only as important as the time that we can fit it in. Part of our problem is that we think that quantity is more important that quality. We can get a lot done in a certain amount of time. It can be impressive. But at the end of the day the real issue is, the eternal issues is, what type of person have you been? What is the quality of your actions? Are they loving, kind, just, and gracious? Have your actions contributed to the peace and justice God desires for this world? What do you think God really wants from you? A scratched off to-do list that is a mile long, or a person who reflects the heart of Christ? What do you think your kids want from you? What is it that your friends want from you? A list of things that you have done with them or for them? Or a relationship of trust and love?

And what is it that shapes us into a person who reflects the heart of Christ? It seems pretty obvious that corporate worship and solitary prayer time were essential for Jesus. The gospels report several times that Jesus regularly went off by himself to pray to God. They also say several times that Jesus attended the synagogue as a regular practice. Think about that for a moment. We know that Jesus was the second person of the Trinity. We know that he was, is God. Yet he was also fully human. So even Jesus had to have regular spiritual practices in order to maintain his relationship with God and to enable him to be the preacher, teacher, and healer he was. He could only do so much because he invested time with God. He could only be so much, so caring, loving, merciful, and gracious, because he spent time with God.

These past few weeks we have been talking about different kinds of wilderness experiences. We have looked at different ways we have been exiled from God. But last week we began to explore how God often uses the desert, the wilderness, whatever form that may take for us, as a means to bring us back to him, to bring us back from exile. In his book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Beldon Lane notes how indifferent the desert is to our human situation. He writes, “The desert scoffs at much we hold dear.”[1] The desert doesn’t distinguish between humans. It treats us each the same. It doesn’t care about our wealth, or our poverty. It is blind to our race, our gender, our social reputation. It ignores our accomplishments and our failures. Lane writes, “We cross its sands – unwelcomed, stripped of influence and reputation, the desert caring nothing for the worries and warped sense of self-importance dragged along behind us.”[2]

In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus begins his healing ministry. Last week he cast out his first demon. This week he goes to the home of Simon, that is, Peter, and Andrew. There Jesus heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and word about him spreads. Soon all the people in the town bring to Jesus all those who were sick or demon-possessed. Jesus heals them and casts out the demons. Jesus’ reputation grows. His popularity sky rockets. He is becoming a local celebrity.

But very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (35-38).

Jesus goes off to a solitary place to escape the popularity contest, to escape the drive to succeed, to escape the demands placed upon him by everyone else. By himself, just as himself, he meets with God. And there his is reminded of who he truly is, of whose he truly is, and what his mission is. All those extraneous things get stripped away so that he can focus on being faithful to God the Father and to his mission to proclaim the good news of the coming kingdom of God.

Sickness can be a form of the wilderness for us. It is a form of exile. Like the desert a virus cares not about all the things we spend our days worrying about. A virus lays our weaknesses and our dependence bare. When we are sick, if we are attentive, we can take some time to recognize that we are all, at base, merely human. Sickness strips away many of those things we strive after day after day. Sickness doesn’t care how we look or how much money we make. When we are sick, the thing we desire most is just to feel better and have the strength and stomach to live a normal day. And when we are sick, we are made aware that we need healing. We can’t heal ourselves. Healing is something that happens to us. And so, if we allow it, sickness can be that place of wilderness that brings us in solitude before God and that opens us up to his grace that shapes our hearts.

Now, before I continue, I want to mention two caveats lest we romanticize sickness. First, while a virus may be indifferent to our social standing, our wealth, and other aspects of our human condition, poverty and injustice are not indifferent to human health. Someone once said, “The rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor.”[3] The rich are better fed, live in healthier environments, and have other advantages that buffer them from getting sick and enable them to get treatment early so that a cough doesn’t turn into pneumonia. The poor and oppressed are more vulnerable and thus morely likely to become sick, and once sick you are spending more resources on your health, thus you stay poor, and you enter into a vicious cycle. So while sickness may be indifferent to our individual social and economic differences, such differences contribute to our health and well-being. Just because God can use sickness for good does not mean we should ignore the social, environmental and political factors that lead to greater rates of sickness and lack of access to healthcare among the poor and the oppressed.

Second, it is a mystery why God sometimes chooses to heal us, and sometimes waits until tomorrow, and sometimes it feels as though tomorrow never comes. While God may use sickness as a means to our healing and spiritual growth, it does not mean that we should welcome sickness in ourselves or that we should dismiss it in others. The right response to sickness, whether in ourselves or in others, is sorrow, compassion, and whatever we can do to bring healing, comfort, and strength.

So whatever form of wilderness you may be experiencing, or perhaps the next time you are sick, I encourage you to use your wilderness to be alone with God. And then use that experience to begin or fortify a regular practice of taking time alone with God, be that daily, or every other day, or weekly, whatever fits your period and station in life. Solitude and silence before God can strip us of all those things we think are so important, and all those things we spend our time chasing after that God is really indifferent to. When we come before God in silence and solitude, we come before him as just a mere human beings, which means as those who are made in his image, as those who are loved, and as those God wants to be in communion with. In his presence we are reminded that we are all in need of healing of one kind or another. And there we recognize that we can’t heal ourselves. And so, like the crowds flocking to Jesus to be healed, silence and solitude before God enables us to come before him and receive his healing touch. A touch that may heal our physical ailments or may not. But a touch that over time heals our spiritual ailments and transforms us more and more into people who reflect the heart of Christ. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

(Silent prayer and meditation)

Almighty and every-living God, you Son, Jesus Christ, healed the sick and restored them to wholeness. Look with compassion on the anguish of the world, and shape our hearts that we may respond to it with the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, for it is in his name that we pray. Amen.

Possession
(Mark 1:21-28; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13)
There is no audio for this sermon.

[Children’s sermon] I wonder what you would do to know what is in this bag. Maybe I have some cookies in this bag. Maybe I have some money. Maybe I have some tickets to the circus. But I wonder what you would do to know what is in this bag. Would you pay me some money? Maybe if you gave me all a quarter I would let you look in this bag. Maybe I would let you look in this bag if you promised to share whatever is in here with all the other kids in the church. It is my job this month to straighten all the hymnals and bibles out and to pick up all the trash before the service. Maybe if you promised to help me do that next week, I would let you look in this bag to see what I have that you do not have.

In his letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul writes that “Knowledge puffs up.” If I know something that you don’t, I might think that I am better than you. I might think that I am smarter than you. I might use what I know to get you to do something for me. Maybe you know someone in school who thinks they know everything and so they think they are better than everyone else.

But is knowledge really that important? What do you think is more important: knowledge or love? Well, let me show you what is in this bag – nothing. There is nothing in this bag. Compared to love, knowledge is like this empty bag; it is worth nothing. Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up while love builds up.” What God and Jesus want from us is not so much that we know things about him and the world, but that we use what we know in order to love others. He wants us to use our knowledge to help others, to heal others, and to encourage others. He wants us to use our knowledge to build others up.

Would you pray with me? Dear God, thank you for all the knowledge about you and your world that we learn in school, in Children’s worship, in Sunday School, and in our own homes. Help us to use the knowledge you give us to love you and others. Amen. [End].

* * * * * * * * * *

Mark begins his gospel with some rather auspicious words: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” When we as Christians hear the term “gospel,” we probably assume that there is really only one gospel, or well, maybe four – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We assume that there is only one gospel and that it is the good news, for that is what gospel means, the good news about Jesus. We assume, in short, that “gospel” is a Christian term. Likewise, we assume that “Son of God” defines Jesus as the second person of the Trinity. The good news is that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, has become the Messiah, the savior of the world.

When Mark wrote his gospel, however, the term gospel was often associated with Imperial politics. Inscriptions have been found that speak about the good news, not of Jesus, but of Caesar Augustus. In these inscriptions Caesar Augustus is proclaimed to be the savior of the whole Roman world, and all the nations Rome has subjugated. Through his power and strength he has overcome Rome’s enemies and brought salvation and peace and prosperity to the entire Empire. Moreover, in these pronouncements Caesar is often called not only Savior, but Son of God, for beginning with Caesar Augustus the Emperors of Rome were worshipped as semi-divine beings. In Mark’s world, the gospel had to do with Caesar.

Mark’s introduction is therefore an immediate political challenge to Caesar. Mark sets the story of Jesus over against the story of Caesar. Who is it that brings true salvation and peace? Who is the true Son of God? Last week we saw that Jesus himself has an answer to that question: “The time has come,” he proclaims in v. 15, “The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the gospel.”

In the movies there seems to be a particular technique used to highlight several important events in the story in a short amount of time. If the movie is about a sports team, they will splash several newspaper headlines before you, one after the other announcing the team’s victory over each successive opponent. If the movie is about a politician the shots will be of the politician giving a speech before the De Motte Society of Concerned Citizens, and then the Pipe Fitters Union in Chicago, then at the Am. Vets lodge in Milwaukee. The effect is to give the viewer snapshots of what is happening, showing major progress and development in the story without taking up much time.

I think Mark may have developed this technique. Mark doesn’t spend any time like Matthew and Luke with genealogies, or birth stories, or stories of when Jesus was young. He jumps right into the action after making his brazen announcement that the good news is about Jesus who is the true Son of God. He gives us a brief snapshot of John the Baptist, quickly relates the baptism of Jesus, and skips all the details of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. After only 13 verses, John is already in prison, and Jesus is preaching throughout Galilee. He then calls his first disciples and starts healing people and casting out demons.

We see a quick succession of snapshots and then Jesus dives head first into his ministry. And the people respond. In verse 21 we read, “They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” And after Jesus liberates a man who is possessed by a demon, Mark says, “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching – and with authority! He even gives orders to unclean spirits and they obey him.’ News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.” In the span of 14 verses Jesus has moved from an unknown nobody to the most talked about man in Galilee.

By chapter 2 Jesus’ popularity arouses the suspicion of the religious leaders. We read another round of quick snapshots in which Jesus tangles with the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. In chapter 3:6 we read, “the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians, that is there arch-enemies, how they might kill Jesus.” The good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, comes into quick and deadly conflict with King Herod, the representative of Caesar.

While Jesus’ popularity with the people arouses the suspicion of the religious leaders and thus develops the theme of the clash between Jesus and Caesar, Jesus’ popularity with the crowds is problematic in its own right. The crowds are amazed with Jesus. They recognize something different about him. But do they recognize what Jesus is really about? Do the disciples even get what Jesus is about? In the first half of the gospel Jesus is constantly having to explain things to the disciples and he upbraids them several times for totally missing the point. In the second half of the gospel, the disciples seem deaf to Jesus’ teaching that he must go to Jerusalem to be killed. And when Jesus is finally arrested, everyone abandons him. The disciples flee to save their own skins and the crowds turn on him. The gospel ends with the women running away from the tomb, scared out of their wits at the news from the angel that Jesus has risen from the dead. We are left hanging, wondering will the women get it? Will they tell the disciples, and will they get it? And will the disciples tell the crowds, and will they get it?

So while the crowds are impressed with Jesus in our text, we ought to look upon their enthusiasm with a bit of suspicion. Their amazement is a mile wide and an inch deep. Why are they really impressed with Jesus? Do they understand the true nature of Jesus’ authority? Or are they just impressed with Jesus’ power to order demons around? What is the difference, for that matter, between power and authority?

One could argue that Caesar’s authority comes from his power. Power is the ability to do something, to effect things. Authority, however, as I see it, is having not only to power to do things, but the right to do them. If you have authority, you are authorized to do things. A thief has the power and ability to break into your house and steal things. The police have the authority to arrest the him and throw him in jail. One of the problems with our world is that, without a moral base, authority is often given to or taken by those with the power. Rome rules over Jerusalem because Rome has the power to do so. In Rome’s eyes, their power gives them the right to rule.

Another problem with our world is that we often agree with this logic. We are impressed by power. We are, in a sense, possessed by power. Many who supported Donald Trump for the presidency were impressed by his power and his wealth. They granted him authority because he promised to get things done. But are we all not impressed with power? We all want politicians who can get things done. We buy computers and smart phones because of the power they give us. We desire higher and higher salaries because of what we can do with our money. Money gives us power to travel, to educate our kids, to buy expensive clothes, and to eat at our favorite restaurants.

In many of our circles here at HPC, we deal with another currency of power – knowledge. In the university knowledge is power. It is knowledge, such as breakthrough research, that gets professors bigger and bigger grants, and larger and larger reputations. It is knowledge that leads to publishing papers and books. It is through knowledge that many of your careers advance. We are drawn to the power of knowledge.

The Apostle Paul, however, says that knowledge puffs up. Within the Christian community in Corinth, some of the Christians knew the truth that there is only one God, “the Father, from whom all things come,” writes Paul, “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” This knowledge gave them the freedom and the power to eat the meat they bought in the marketplaces, meat that was taken from the sacrifices made to the pagan gods. Other Christians, however, were scandalized by this. They were still new to the idea that the gods they used to worship were not really gods. They saw eating such meat as idolatrous. So Paul urges the Christians with such knowledge to refrain from using it for the sake of those who might be scandalized. He, in sense, acknowledges their power to eat the meat, but insists that their authority to do so, their right to do so, should be guided by love. For true authority derives from love.

We have been looking these past few weeks at different ways in which we experience exile and the wilderness. In our gospel lesson the man who is demon possessed obviously experiences exile because of his condition. He was probably ostracized by his community and his family and considered a danger to them. But Jesus uses his power with love to set him free and to reunite him with the community.

I have argued that on another level it is the crowds who are also in exile. They are amazed by Jesus’ power and they say by his authority, but they don’t truly understand his authority which derives from the love and leads him to the cross. When push comes to shove, they abandon him. They don’t want that kind of authority.

You see, since the Garden of Eden, we humans have been enthralled with knowledge that gives us power. Adam and Eve sought the knowledge that would give them god-like power, the power to know good and evil. We desire our own power rather than trusting in the love and in the power and in the authority of God. And for that Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden. Our desire for such knowledge and power can drive us as well from the presence of God. For when we desire such power, we are far from the heart of God.

Exile from God, however, time spent in the wilderness, is not just a punishment from God, or a natural result of the fact that our sin repels us from God. The wilderness can be a place that God uses for our transformation. The wilderness is the place where God taught Israel, and then even Jesus, true reliance upon him and trust in him. In the wilderness ones needs are made strikingly apparent and desires are aroused because of the starkness of the environment.

In the early centuries of the Christian church, soon after Rome adopted the Christian religion under Constantine, soon after Christianity began to be domesticated by the power of the Empire, certain church leaders fled to the deserts of Egypt and the Sinai. They wanted to escape the lure of power that came with the wedding of the church and state. In the desert they found that two virtues led them to avoid the temptations of power and to embrace love: apatheia and arupnia.[1]

Apatheia, from which we get apathy, is a stance of indifference. In order to survive in the desert one had to become indifferent to the difficulties of living in the desert, the lack of water, and food. One had to be indifferent to the lack of community. One had to become indifferent to the many desires the lack of all these things aroused in you.

But true apatheia is not indifference to all things. It is indifference to the things that don’t truly matter. This is so because apatheia was paired with arupnia, or attentiveness. One had to pay attention to see where water collected in the desert. One had to be attentive to one’s health and strength lest one become sick with no one around to help. Ultimately one had to become attentive to God, to his blessings, to his presence, to his guiding you to know what is truly important.

In Jesus we see apatheia and arupnia developing into love. Jesus is indifferent to the opinions of the crowds. He is indifferent to the judgments of the religious leaders. He is indifferent to the power that comes with the terms Messiah, Son of God, and King. But his indifference to these things enables him to be attentive to those who come to him to be healed, to be exercised of demons, to be taught about the Kingdom of God. Love, you see, is being attentive the true needs of those who are placed in front of you.

Friends in Christ, let us not be amazed by the powers and authorities of this world, but let us be attentive to that which really matters so that we may follow our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.